CHAPTER ONE CURIOSITY ON THE RED PLANET If any one thing doesn’t work just right it’s game over said engineer Tom Rivellini It was August 5 2012 Approximately 353 million miles 568 million km from Earth a spacecraft was nearing Mars It was following a specific landing plan The mission team knew it had only one chance If something went wrong nothing could be done to fix it T h e r o b o t i c Curiosity r o v e r d r o p p e d t o t h e M a r t i a n s u r f a c e i n August 2012 5
Power source Cameras and laser Robotic arm Drill brush and scoop tools Antenna Weather sensors Wheels with independent motors Curiosity Rover This diagram shows some of the parts of Curiosity Read about all the described parts of the rover What parts does Curiosity have in common with other robots you have seen Inside the spacecraft was the Mars rover Curiosity It had launched from Florida on the morning of November 26 2011 Curiosity was not the first Mars rover However it is by far the biggest and most advanced It is the size of a small car Curiosity is a robotic mobile science laboratory Its mission is to learn more about Mars 6
This was not just any robot Curiosity has many instruments It uses them for all kinds of tasks Its laser blasts rocks so their insides can be studied Sensors record the Martian weather Cameras and computers let it drive safely on Mars’s rocky surface But before it could study Mars Curiosity had to land safely IN THE REAL WORLD Talking Heads Today some robots can mimic people They can even hold simple conversations One robot developed in Texas is a head called Han Working together its cameras and computers can recognize faces it has seen before Han can guess people’s age and gender from looking at them It can also guess if they are happy or sad Then it can react appropriately Han may be useful for customer service jobs The mission team held its breath Finally the rover sent a signal It had landed successfully Its eight-month journey was over The team erupted in cheers On August 6 2012 Curiosity opened a 7
