“Curiosity” hits Mars

The Mars Science Laboratory is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by Nasa in late November. The project successfully landed the Mars rover named Curiosity in Gale Crater on August 6 2012. Some of the reasons that they started the mission was to find how suitable the planet was to live on, it’s climate and geology, and also to find data for a manned mission to Mars. Curiosity has many different scientific instruments which were all designed by an international group. The rover is around two times longer, and five times heavier than the previous space rovers, Spirit, and Opportunity. It also carries ten times the mass of scientific instruments and samples. Nasa anticipates that the rover will explore for at least 687 earth days, and was tested to explore for about 4 years.

“The landing of the Mars science rover Curiosity does not qualify as a significant scientific achievement and should not be getting so much of the public’s attention, says the team of scientists who discovered the Higgs Boson last month. (Borowitz-New Yorker).” Of course the Higgs Boson discovery was very important and new but so is the Mars mission. For me, that statement is wrong because it is proclaiming that one discovery is bigger and more significant than the other. Both are equally of  importance. But I also feel that NASA’s mission to Mars has some defects. Mainly it’s one of being so costly. For example, the total cost of the MSL project is about $2.5 billion from the U.S. and Germany contributed 2.5 million euros which is equivalent $3.1 million. This expenditure is not necessary as is the mission not completely necessary either. The money could be going to local and more current problems in the U.S. However if Curiosity does discover great things, then our world benefits greatly as well. So, keep going NASA’s very own, very advanced rover, Curiosity!

~Samira Anant

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