Mars Rover Looks to the Mountain

The Mars rover Curiosity set its cameras on its destination on Day One of its two-year mission on the Red Planet. The rover landed about 10 kilometers from Mount Sharp, NASA estimates, a target the rover will explore.

The U.S. space agency landed a new exploring rover on a targeted site on Mars in what one scientist called a "miracle of engineering." The accomplishment is only the beginning of what is hoped to be a “beautiful and complex science mission,” said Michael Watkins, mission manager, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

At a news briefing about 11 hours after the rover Curiosity touched down August 5, mission scientists were able to estimate that the craft is about 10 kilometers from Mount Sharp, seen in the distance above, an almost 5-kilometer-high mountain that will be a major point of study in the two-year mission.

The main systems of the spacecraft all seemed to have survived the landing in good order, JPL reported, as did the scientific instruments onboard the craft. Those instruments are the most sophisticated ever sent to another planet and will allow analysis of soil and rock that should broaden knowledge of Mars' history.

Like stratified land formations on Earth, the layers of different materials to be studied in Mount Sharp are expected to provide insight on an earlier Mars. Observations made by aerial surveillance and earlier rovers suggest that the planet was once wet and warm. Scientists hope to learn how it became the cold, desert-like planet they find today. The key questions Curiosity has been sent to answer are: Was the Martian environment ever capable of supporting life, and if so, what signs might remain?