(November 26, 2011 at 9:49 am)popeyespappy Wrote: The last of NASA’s planned large interplanetary probes is scheduled for launch today at 10:02 EST. The nuclear powered, Mini Cooper sized rover in scheduled to arrive on Mars in August of 2012 and explore the surface of the Red Planet for at least 686 Earth days.
Quote:The MSL mission has four goals: To determine if life could have ever arisen on Mars, to characterize the climate of Mars, to characterize the geology of Mars, and to prepare for human exploration. To contribute to the four science goals, Mars Science Laboratory has eight scientific objectives:[17][18]
1. Determine the nature and inventory of organic compounds. If no organic compounds are found, that is useful information, as evidence about life on Mars may not be near the surface. It would also aid understanding of the environmental conditions that remove organics.[19]
2. Inventory the chemical building blocks of life as we know it: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.
3. Identify features that may represent the effects of metabolism or biosignatures.
4. Investigate the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials.
5. Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils.
6. Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes.
7. Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide.
8. Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
I have grave misgivings about the sky crane concept. I think it is a high probability of failure method in which multiple modes of catastrophic failure are present.
