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Course: NASA > Unit 3
Lesson 4: Curiosity rover: discoveries- Curiosity has landed
- Curiosity descent
- Systems check
- Curiosity's first drive
- Navigation update
- Observations
- Discovery: Streambed
- First CheMin results
- Preparation for holidays
- Calcium-rich deposits found
- Results of first drilling
- Mars' bygone atmosphere
- 'Spring Break' over: commanding resumes
- Rover ready to switch gears
- Trek to Mt. Sharp begins
- Dating younger rocks
- Curiosity completes its first martian year
- A softer trek to mount sharp
- A taste of mount sharp
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Mars' bygone atmosphere
NASA's Curiosity finds that the Red Planet doesn't have the same atmosphere it used to.
Want to join the conversation?
- What's the temperature on mars?(5 votes)
- Dear connor.congelli937/ awsome,
In winter, near the poles temperatures can get down to minus 195 degrees F (minus 125 degrees C). A summer day on Mars may get up to 70 degrees F (20 degrees C) near the equator, but at night the temperature can plummet to about minus 100 degrees F (minus 73 C).(8 votes)
- Why did they name the area John Klein. Who is he or is it just some random name?(4 votes)
- John Klein was the name of the first rock the Curiosity rover drilled into, and was named after John Klein, who was the former deputy principal investigator for the mission who died in 2011.(2 votes)
- Were did the atmosphere go and will scientist's ever find the answer.(3 votes)
- Can you just burn all the dry ice on mars to make it suitable for life? There is so much, I think that the atmosphere had frozen and dropped down from the sky.XD(2 votes)
- You mean to make the dry ice back into gas to begin to create an atmosphere. This is a good idea, and is the basis for beginning to terraform mars. You would need to heat the planet up somehow to get the process going. Mars may be able to have an atmosphere in the future, but CO2 from dry ice isnt breathable. Still, it's a good first step so that your new atmosphere helps to regulate the temperature on the surface making it more bearable(3 votes)
- I wonder if any of the scientist's become emotionally attached to their rovers(2 votes)
Video transcript
(Music) I'm Ashwin Vasavada, the Mars Science Laboratory deputy project scientist, and this is your Curiosity rover report. Curiosity has been continuing the analysis of the John Klein area where it drilled into rock and acquired its first sample of rock powder. After delivering a number of small portions to SAM and CheMin, Curiosity dumped the remaining material in two piles. One pile is made up of material that went through a sieve; the rest wasn't sieved. We put those piles near the original holes so that instruments on Curiosity's arm and mast, like ChemCam, could study them all together. Curiosity's science team reported their progress in unraveling the different chemical compositions of rocks, soil, and dust. The ChemCam team fired a series of laser shots, (zap, zap, zap), right down the side of the drill hole, revealing how composition changes with depth. Inspite of all the busy work on the rocks and dust, Curiosity occasionally does take time to stop and smell the atmosphere. The SAM instrument took a deep breath last week in order to look at a gas called Argon. SAM compared the amount of light Argon, Argon-36, and a heavier form, Argon-38. SAM found that the mix of Argon at Mars today is heavier than in the Earth's atmosphere, the sun, and in Jupiter. These measurements are evidence that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere, and much of it was lost long ago. That would help explain the evidence for rivers and lakes in the past, in spite of the cold and dry conditions today. Through the month of April, Mars will be behind the Sun, as seen from Earth. This planetary alignment, called solar conjunction, happens every 26 months. Because the Sun can disrupt radio signals between Curiosity and Earth, we won't send any more commands to Curiosity until we know they'll be safely received. In the mean time, the operations team will listen for a daily signal from the rover letting us know that it's healthy and continuing to study the weather and space radiation all on its own. We'll plan to pick up science operations once again in early May. This has been your Curiosity rover report. Please check back for more updates.