Making its first movement on the Martian surface, Curiosity's drive combined forward, turn and reverse segments. This placed the rover roughly 20 feet (6 meters) from the spot where it landed 16 days ago.
This panorama shows the tire
tracks from Curiosity's first test drive. On Aug. 22, 2012, the rover made its
first move, going forward about 15 feet (4.5 meters), rotating 120 degrees and
then reversing about 8 feet (2.5 meters). Curiosity is about 20 feet (6 meters)
from its landing site, now named Bradbury Landing. Image credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech [Full image
and caption] [Latest
images]
NASA has approved the Curiosity science team's choice to name the landing ground for the influential author, who was born 92 years ago today and died this year. The location where Curiosity touched down is now called Bradbury Landing.
"This was not a difficult choice for the science team," said Michael Meyer, NASA program scientist for Curiosity. "Many of us and millions of other readers were inspired in our lives by stories Ray Bradbury wrote to dream of the possibility of life on Mars."
A close-up view of Curiosity's first tire tracks.
Today's drive confirmed the health of Curiosity's mobility system and produced the rover's first wheel tracks on Mars, documented in images taken after the drive. During a news conference at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., the mission's lead rover driver, Matt Heverly, showed an animation derived from visualization software used for planning the first drive.
"We have a fully functioning mobility system with lots of amazing exploration ahead," Heverly said.
Curiosity will spend several more days of working beside Bradbury Landing, performing instrument checks and studying the surroundings, before embarking toward its first driving destination approximately 1,300 feet (400 meters) to the east-southeast.
"Curiosity is a much more complex vehicle than earlier Mars rovers. The testing and characterization activities during the initial weeks of the mission lay important groundwork for operating our precious national resource with appropriate care," said Curiosity Project Manager Pete Theisinger of JPL. "Sixteen days in, we are making excellent progress."
Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
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The Curiosity science team has begun pointing
instruments on the rover's mast for investigating specific targets of interest
near and far. The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument used a laser and
spectrometers this week to examine the composition of rocks exposed when the
spacecraft's landing engines blew away several inches of overlying material.
The instrument's principal investigator, Roger Weins of Los Alamos National
Laboratory in New Mexico, reported that measurements made on the rocks in this
scoured-out feature called Goulburn suggest a basaltic composition. "These may
be pieces of basalt within a sedimentary deposit," Weins said. [more]
In a career spanning more than 70 years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and nearly 50 books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time. His groundbreaking works include "Fahrenheit 451," "The Martian Chronicles," "The Illustrated Man," "Dandelion Wine," and "Something Wicked This Way Comes." He wrote the screenplay for John Huston's classic film adaptation of "Moby Dick," and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted 65 of his stories for television's The Ray Bradbury Theater, and won an Emmy for his teleplay of "The Halloween Tree." Curiosity's First Daredevil Stunt -- Science@NASA Where Will Curiosity Go First? -- Science@NASA Strange but True: Curiosity's Sky Crane -- Science@NASA Opportunity Runs the First Martian Marathon -- Science@NASA Mars Landing Sky Show -- Science@NASA NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project, including Curiosity, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the rover.
More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can
follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity
and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity
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