NASA sends its Mars Curiosity rover on a 'summer road trip' to Mount Sharp

NASA has sent its Mars Curiosity rover on a trip to a new area of Mount Sharp, the peak located in the center of the Gale Crater. While the rover has journeyed an area of the colossal Mount Sharp known as the clay-bearing unit, NASA declared in a blog post that the space vehicle is now ready for a “summer road trip” on its own.  

A massive structure that sits in the middle of a huge crater, the colossal Martian mountain’s new areas will be explored by the rover which will put a mile on Curiosity’s odometer, as per NASA. At least three miles high, the area which acts as a timeline for Mars is extremely important for the researchers and the exploration would reveal each layer in detail. Roughly covering a mile (1.6 kilometers) of terrain, the rover will be able to ascend to the next section of the 3-mile-tall Martian (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it's been exploring since 2014 recording the conditions that support ancient microbial life.  

Curiosity was designed to go beyond Opportunity's search for the history of water, said Abigail Fraeman of JPL, who has served as deputy project scientist for both missions. We're uncovering an ancient world that offered life a foothold for longer than we realized.

In the next stop, the rover will explore the mountain called the "sulfate-bearing unit.”It will record the climate and prospects for life that changed nearly 3 billion years ago. The space explorer will note the presence of sulfates, like gypsum and Epsom salts, usually form around water as it evaporates on the surface. Rover handlers will commanding Curiosity from home rather than their offices at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, as per NASA’s blog post. With a top speed range between 82 and 328 feet (25 and100 meters) per hour, the rover will also stop along the way to drill a sample. Most of the trip would be covered relying on the rover's automated driving abilities to find the safest path on its own.  

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Curiosity can't drive entirely without humans in the loop, said Matt Gildner, lead rover driver at JPL. But it does have the ability to make simple decisions along the way to avoid large rocks or risky terrain. It stops if it doesn't have enough information to complete a drive on its own. 

Exploring the sandstone cap

Rover, additionally, will take a trip to a slope with a sandstone cap known as the "Greenheugh Pediment” which largely represents the major transition in the climate of Gale Crater. In this region, the rover will discover details about how the lakes that existed in the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) crater disappeared.  

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(Images Credit: NASA)