Skip to footer

Death Valley used as stand-in for Martian landscape

A project scientist for NASA's huge Curiosity rover is leading a handful of journalists on a trip to Death Valley, whose geology and vistas resemble Mars in some places. The goal is to help reporters get a better idea of the science Curiosity will be doing when it touches down on the Red Planet on the night of Aug. 5.

|
space.com
A digital rendition of NASA's enormous Curiosity Rover on a Martian landscape. credit: SPACE.com

| Pasadena, Calif.

The chief scientist for NASA's newest Mars rover mission is heading to Death Valley today (April 30), and SPACE.com is going along for the ride.

Caltech's John Grotzinger, project scientist for NASA's huge Curiosity rover, is leading a handful of journalists on a two-day trip to the famous patch of California desert, whose geology and vistas are remarkably Mars-like in some places.

The goal is to help reporters get a better idea of the science Curiosity will be doing when it touches down on the Red Planet on the night of Aug. 5.

We depart from the Caltech campus here at 8 a.m. local time (11 a.m. EDT; 1500 GMT) today, and should roll into Death Valley about four hours later. Unlike frigid Mars, Death Valley will be hot for the next couple of days; we've been told to bring sunscreen, wide-brim hats and lots of water.

Curiosity, the centerpiece of NASA's $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, blasted off in late November and is slated to land at the Red Planet's Gale Crater in less than 100 days. [Photos: Curiosity's Gale Crater on Mars]

The 1-ton rover's main mission is to determine if the Gale Crater area is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life. Curiosity will use a suite of 10 science instruments to get at this question, including a rock-zapping laser and gear designed to identify organic compounds — carbon-based molecules that are the building blocks of life as we know it.

Some of these instruments sit at the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) robotic arm. The arm also wields a 2-inch (5-centimeter) drill, allowing Curiosity to take samples from deep inside Martian rocks. No previous Red Planet rover has been able to do this.

Before Curiosity can begin its science work, however, it must land safely — not a given for any planetary mission, and certainly not for MSL, whose huge bulk necessitated the invention of an entirely new landing method. Curiosity will be lowered to the Martian surface on cables by a rocket-powered skycrane, with cameras rolling all the while.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Death Valley used as stand-in for Martian landscape
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0430/Death-Valley-used-as-stand-in-for-Martian-landscape
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe