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BY JASMINE BAILEY
Since its successful landing on Mars, the Curiosity rover has continued to make milestone
accomplishments, and after Monday we can add one more to the list — the use of an arm.
WTTG has details.
“Curiosity has not stretched its 7 foot robotic arm since before its launch in November.
It’s loaded with tools including a drill, scoop and a camera.”
USA Today reports the arm will be used to attempt to learn whether the Martian environment
was favorable to microbial life.
“Engineers unfurled the arm, extended it forward using all five of its joints, then
stowed it again…The test is part of a full health check up…”
Curiosity’s arm is a powerful tool on the robot because the arm contains...
a drill that can dig an inch into Martian rocks
a camera for microscopic analyses a spectrometer to determine the composition
of surface targets
There’s been a lot of hype about the curiosity rover, and NASA plans to send another robot
to Mars in the near future.
It’s all left a writer for Wired Science asking — “Is NASA Addicted to Mars?”
“The project, called InSight involves drilling 16 feet into the crust of Mars. The mission,
set to launch in 2016, will provide detailed information about the planet’s core, in
particular determining whether it is liquid or solid… (It) will (also) measure Martian
seismic activity and the planet’s rotation axis.”
It will be about 4 more years before we get to see the launch of Insight. And as for Curiosity,
mission managers said the arm must pass several more tests before NASA will see those soil
sample results.