Mars Express marks spot for landing
Washington, Aug. 4: Much like a treasure map branded with an ‘X’ to mark the site of buried bounty, Nasa’s rover Curiosity will be targeting its very own ‘X’ inside Gale Crater, to seek out the signs of past water — and maybe even life — on the Red Planet, it has been revealed.
Mars Express will play an important role in monitoring the spectacular delivery of Curiosity to the martian surface during the ‘ seven minutes of terror’ that describe the entry, descent and landing of the car-sized rover.
However, the ESA spacecraft has already provided information that led to refinements of the rover’s landing ellipse last month. art of Nasa’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, Curiosity was initially aiming for a 20 x 25 km landing ellipse, already much smaller than the landing target area for any previous Mars mission thanks to MSL’s techniques for improved landing precision.
By combining elevation data from the High Resolution Stereo Camera on Mars Express, image data from the Context Camera on Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and colour information from Viking Orbiter imagery, the target ellipse was adjusted to just 20 x 7 km.
This shifts the centre of the ellipse closer to the mountain inside the 154 km-wide Gale Crater.
The central mound — known as Mount Sharp — rises 5.5 km above the crater floor and is the prime destination of Curiosity.
Orbiting spacecraft have already identified minerals and clays there that suggest water may have once filled the area, and as Curiosity slowly makes its ascent, it will analyse samples of these materials with its onboard laboratory in search of its own treasure: the building blocks of life.
— ANI As Nasa’s curiosity is all set to land on Mars, not many people are aware that you can go out after sunset and spot the red planet for yourself with your unaided eyes. Nasa’s Curiosity lander will land on Mars arou-nd 1.31 am on August 6 after cruising across 350mn miles of interplanetary space for 81/2 months and this event is all over the news. You can step outside this week to spot Curiosity’s destination low in the west after sunset.