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Besides possibly finding evidence of life on Mars, a scientific breakthrough, can this mission yield any technological breakthroughs, as did the Apollo missions to the moon? The Mars landing is getting millions and millions of hits on the Net. And that is going to be worldwide. And the dividends from that, that will flow into this sector of engineering, will be amazing. I'm not talking about space. I'm talking about applications of what was learned…I don't think we can be more proud than we are.
-John McLaughlin |
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A 2,000-pound robotic rover, the size of an automobile, is lowered by cables from a jet- propelled platform and lands with pinpoint accuracy on the surface of Mars. It is named Curiosity. The touchdown occurred after a seven-minutes-of-terror plunge towards the Martian surface at 13,000 miles per hour. And that seven-minute descent came after eight months of voyaging from Earth to Mars. Curiosity lifted off from Cape Canaveral on November 23rd, 2011. It traveled 352 million miles, the distance between planet Earth and planet Mars. Curiosity is now beaming amazing photos back to Earth of the Martian landscape. Curiosity will explore rocks and Martian soil, searching for whether life ever existed on Mars. The rover will dig for none other than the building blocks of life: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, sulfur. |
