Mars Curiosity landing - seven minutes of terror

07 August, 2012

The exploration to Mars which started over hundreds of years ago has been an important part of the space exploration program of the US, Europe and Russia. In a latest attempt, NASA's Curiosity rover that will transmit high-quality images and videos from the Red planet has already landed there.

MANY SPACECRAFTS have been launched towards Mars to gather some data about the history of Mars and any possible human mission on it. But till now the exploration of Mars has experienced very little success.

Now NASA has started a new Mars mission, with the biggest and most complex Mars rover, Curiosity. This rover made the most complicated landing on the surface of the Mars through cables hanging down from the descent capsule - the so-called "sky crane" - this is a new technique which was not used earlier.

Usually landers and rovers, takes seven minutes to descend through Mars atmosphere and land on the surface of Mars. This seven minutes of time is the most scary period and is known as "seven minutes of terror," many missions on Mars have failed due to the difficulty in landing on the Red Planet, but the scientists were confident that this rover will safely land there.

Curiosity is the largest rover ever made and this rover will be searching for organic compounds like carbon on Mars, which are the building blocks of life on earth. The rover landed on Gale Crater, which is thought to have been a lake earlier. The reason behind choosing this place is because it is an ideal place for search of organic materials.

Unlike the old rovers, Curiosity is nuclear-powered and does not need solar panels for its energy supply. It has advanced cameras and has a most advanced laboratory for chemical analysis of soil and rock samples.

Obama's science adviser John Holdren described the landing as "an enormous step forward in planetary exploration. Nobody has ever done anything like this. We are actually the only country that has landed surface landers on any other planet," he told NASA television. He also said that the rover was vastly bigger, more capable and more complicated one. Let's hope for the success of this mission.