The Curiosity rover begins holiday trekking. In the coming months, it will cover almost 2 kilometers
Over the next few weeks, the Perseverance rover will launch toward Mars, almost the twin of the Curiosity rover currently traveling on Mars, which landed there almost eight years ago. This does not mean, however, that Curiosity is going to retire. He is preparing a busy summer.
In recent days, Curiosity has embarked on a journey in which it will cover just over 1.5 km in the coming months. At the end of this traverse, the rover will be able to start exploring the next section of the hill Aeolis Mons (Mt. Sharp), which it has been studying since 2014.
Located at the bottom of the Gale Crater, the Aeolis Mons peak consists of sedimentary layers formed over millions of years. Each layer describes the changes taking place on the Red Planet, which billions of years ago resembled the Earth, had lakes, streams, rivers and a dense atmosphere and with time turned into a dry, frosty rock almost completely devoid of atmosphere.
The closest destination for the Curiosity rover will be a sulfate-rich hill fragment. As a rule, sulfates, such as gypsum or bitter salt (magnesium sulfate), usually arise near water and as such are another proof of how the climate and opportunities for life development looked 3 billion years ago.
However, between the rover and these sulfates there is a vast sandy area that the rover must bypass so that there is no risk of getting bogged down and this is the reason for the need for such a long journey. Rover operators who control it from home during a pandemic, rather than from a mission control center, suppose that it will arrive at the beginning of autumn, although a team of scientists may decide to stop if there is something interesting to explore along the way.
Depending on the terrain, the maximum speed of the Curiosity rover is 25 to 100 meters per hour. A part of the road will be traveled by the rover using the autonomous driving system, which itself chooses the safest way. Engineers allow the rover to make decisions when they do not have adequate photos of the rover’s immediate surroundings.
Curiosity cannot move itself without human supervision, but it has the ability to make simple decisions when it needs to bypass larger boulders or an uncertain step. If he can’t make his own decision, he stops and waits for instructions from Earth
– says Matt Gildner, chief researcher of the JPL rover.
Knowing life, on the way to an area rich in sulfates, Curiosity will discover some more interesting objects that will require closer examination or sampling, but this should not significantly affect the implementation of the mission.
If everything goes according to plan, when Curiosity reaches its destination, there will be a Perseverance rover between Earth and Mars, whose landing on Mars is planned for February 18, 2021.
In the animation below you can see what path Curiosity had to travel to reach Mars. Landing here looks especially fascinating (from 0:58).
The Curiosity rover begins holiday trekking. In the coming months, it will cover almost 2 kilometers
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