CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A rover of “monster truck” proportions zoomed toward Mars on an 8 1/2-month, 354 million-mile journey Saturday, the biggest, best-equipped robot ever sent to explore another planet.
NASA’s six-wheeled, one- armed wonder, Curiosity, will reach Mars next summer and use its jackhammer drill, rock-zapping laser machine and other devices to search for evidence that Earth’s next-door neighbor might once have been home to the teeniest forms of life.
More than 13,000 invited guests jammed the Kennedy Space Center to witness NASA’s first launch to Mars in four years, and the first flight of a martian rover in eight years. Mars fever gripped the crowd.
NASA astrobiologist Pan Conrad, whose carbon compound-seeking instrument is on the rover, wore a bright blue blouse emblazoned with rockets, planets and the words “Next stop Mars!”
She jumped, cheered and snapped pictures as the Atlas V rocket — provided by United Launch Alliance of Centennial — blasted off. So did Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Roger Wiens, a planetary scientist in charge of Curiosity’s laser blaster, called ChemCam.
Surrounded by 50 American and French members of his team, Wiens shouted, “Go, Go, Go!” as the rocket soared into a cloudy sky.
The 1-ton Curiosity — 10 feet long, 9 feet wide and 7 feet tall at its mast — is a mobile, nuclear-powered laboratory holding 10 science instruments that will sample martian soil and rocks, and with unprecedented skill, analyze them right on the spot.
It’s as big as a car. But NASA’s Mars exploration program director calls it “the monster truck of Mars.”
“It’s an enormous mission. It’s equivalent of three missions, frankly, and quite an undertaking,” said the ecstatic program director, Doug McCuistion.
“Science fiction is now science fact. We’re flying to Mars. We’ll get it on the ground and see what we find.”
The primary goal of the $2.5 billion mission is to see whether cold, dry, barren Mars might have been hospitable for microbial life once upon a time — or might even still be conducive to life now. No actual life detectors are on board; rather, the instruments will hunt for organic compounds.
Curiosity’s 7-foot arm has a jackhammer on the end to drill into the martian red rock, and the 7-foot mast on the rover is topped with high-definition and laser cameras.
With Mars the ultimate goal for astronauts, NASA will use Curiosity to measure radiation at the red planet. The rover also has a weather station on board that will provide temperature, wind and humidity readings; a computer software app with daily weather updates is planned. A radiation-assessment detector was built by Southwest Research Institute in Boulder.
The world has launched more than three dozen missions to the ever-alluring Mars, which is more like Earth than the other solar-system planets. Yet fewer than half those quests have succeeded.
Rover to spend 2 years satisfying its curiosity
If its August landing on Mars is successful, Curiosity will spend a minimum of two years roaming around Gale Crater, chosen from among more than 50 potential landing sites because it’s so rich in minerals. Scientists said if there is any place on Mars that might have been ripe for life, it may well be there.
NASA expects to put at least 12 miles on the odometer, once the rover sets down on the martian surface.
