Strip the cosmo(Mars and curiosity rover)

camzy (67)in #science • 7 years ago

Hello Steemians

Yesterday I got hocked to the discovery family channel and I watched some couple of show which were amazing, I decided the blog about the most interesting show I watched Strip the cosmo(mars and curiosity) Mars is the fourth planet in the solar system and it's refered to as the red planet Being very close to earth I would say Mars is the only planet that has been probed and studied alot by scientists, but before I would go in into the studies let's know Mars itself

The name Mars in English means the ancient Roman god of war, mars is refered to as the red planet because the reddish iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance, mars is the second smallest planet in the solar system after mercury, mars has two natural satellites(moon) which are Phobos and Deimos. Now over to the study
CURIOSITY (rover)

You can talk about mars without mentioning curiosity rover (as it was said on the discovery channel)
Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA 's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL). Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 15:02 UTC aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC. Source: wiki

Curiosity estimated cost was $2.5billion parked with 17 2mp cameras, a mechanical arm, an inbuilt lab inside(to test samples) and a battery for its power
First question that came to my mind while watching the program was

why will a rover with an est. cost of $2.5billion would be parked with 2mp cameras?

I know this would be the first question to go through anyone who uses gadgets alot and familiar to cameras because the least modern day digital camera is 10mp but it was parked with 2mp cameras for a reason
Reason is because of the transmission range it sends it's data, the distance from earth to mars is about 34 and 249 million miles, sending data between this distance takes about 23minutes depending on the size, so imagine if it was equipped with high definition cameras, the outcome would be stressful to NASA because of the procedures of being transferred from one sataelite to the other before earth.
The mechanical arm of the curiosity rover also left me with some few questions but I decided to google it and according to wiki..

The rover has a 2.1 m (6.9 ft) long robotic arm with a cross-shaped turret holding five devices that can spin through a 350° turning range. The arm makes use of three joints to extend it forward and to stow it again while driving. It has a mass of 30 kg (66 lb) and its diameter, including the tools mounted on it, is about 60 cm (24 in). [118] It was designed, built, and tested by MDA US Systems , building upon their prior robotic arm work on the Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander

The arm possesses a camera for taking photos and self portraits(selfies), a drill and a sample tube.
Over to the inbuilt lab, the most fascinating part of curiosity, I wondered how it worked, haven't really researched on that but would do in subsequent time.
Looking at the battery power, one might wonder first.

how can a Bot over 35miles away be powered with a battery?

Well after some explanations done by the discovery channel scientists and some of my researchs when I saw this
Curiosity is powered by a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), like the successfulViking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers in 1976. Radioisotope power systems (RPSs) are generators that produce electricity from the decay ofradioactive isotopes , such asplutonium-238 , which is a non- fissile isotope of plutonium. Heat given off by the decay of this isotope is converted into electric voltage by thermocouples, providing constant power during all seasons and through the day and night. Source: wiki
Then my doubts where clear. ,:-)
The most interesting part of the show was that the name curiosity was given to the rover by a a twenty year old Clara MA.

All images where gotten from pixabay.com

Reference: 1-2