Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover Animation

This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012. A shorter 4-minute version of this animation, with narration, is also available on our youtube page.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[will atkinson]

Personally i think they should have included a little solarpanel and battery so the probe isnt useless when the RGTs run out (in a decade or two) but what the fuck do i know about rocket science

[serpentphoenix]

people stop asking questions on YouTube . USE your resources, like wikipedia, nasa.org and its ntrs documents . Also, people stop acting like rocket engineers, unless you actually ARE rocket engineers (KSP players do not qualify) .

[Chickenkeeper24]

There are three possible reasons I can think of to answer that question.

1) It's the size of a small car so there may be hardware,motor or power limitations involved

2) You wouldn't want to tell a multi-billion dollar rover to drive fast along rocky or bumpy terrain and have it accidentally hit something and be destroyed or permanently damaged. There is a 16 minute delay in communications between earth and mars after all, so it would be far too late before anyone could tell it to stop

[Yoda251]

I have a question for you in that case. Cui Bono?

[Yoda251]

Lots of testing on Earth (they built a second "test" rover which is still in a NASA lab somewhere) and computer simulation.

[xav tau tug hlub kuv]

hay

[will atkinson]

Yer i agree but still think that the solar panel is useful when the RGTs run out or as a backup source but again i know shit about shit

[nebulae10]

its 2013 need real vids

[comicbstudios]

not really because mars is further away from the sun and so solar is even less effecient there. also the wiper like device again is justadded weight and same with a large battery in total it is easier just to use RTG

[BrainMutant]

curiosity mission is fake

[will atkinson]

If you had enough battery storage to last the storms and the nights and a window wiper like devise i think it would be a decent source of power as a backup

[youske3315]

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