Topic of interest #3: Exploring the Red Planet

On August 6 of this year, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) celebrated the landing of rover Curiosity on Mars. The Curiosity rover is a car-sized robotic rover exploring Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL). Curiosity went through a seven-point landing routine, that included: separation from cruise module, heat shield deployment, parachute opening, altitude sensing, rocket-powered sky crane, rover touchdown and skycrane flyaway. 
You can observe the animated process in this NASA video:



It took nine months for the rover to make it to Mars. Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 10:02 EST aboard the MSL spacecraft and successfully landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC.

The rover's goals include: investigation of the Martian climate and geology; whether Mars ever supported life, including investigation of the role of water; and planetary habitability studies in preparation for future human exploration.

The tools of the Curiosity Rover include:

• Mast Camera (MastCam)
• Chemistry and Camera complex (ChemCam)
• Navigation cameras (Navcams)
• Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS)
• Hazard avoidance cameras (Hazcams)
• Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI)
• Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS)
• Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin)
• Sample analysis at Mars (SAM)
• Radiation assessment detector (RAD)
• Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN)
• Mars Descent Imager (MARDI)
• Robotic arm

I am totally fascinated with this machine as well as space exploration in general. We read and watch movies about people traveling through space, and we are used to images of space crafts and outer planets, however so far, a lot of it is just a fruit of writers' and film-makers' imagination how cool is the fact that landing on Mars of human-built machine is actually taking place right now and is real!

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/michael-brooks/2012/08/curiosity-lands-mars-us-wins-space-heptathlon

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/06/mars-rover-curiosity-landing-live-updates_n_1742499.html#slide=1336212

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/post/mars-rover-curiosity-approaches-the-red-planet-live/2012/08/05/c51c9068-dd8c-11e1-af1d-753c613ff6d8_blog.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiosity_rover