NASA's Curiosity rover made its first drive on Mars Wednesday, more than two weeks after its high-stakes landing on the red planet. To celebrate the day, as well as what would have been the late science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury's 92nd birthday, NASA named the rover's landing site "Bradbury Landing."
Eric Carlson, physics professor at Wake Forest University, says he's interested to see what evidence - if any - the rover discovers in its search for clues to past conditions on Mars favorable to some form of life. He's watching the rover's progress closely, because moving is a complicated operation. "Keep in mind that if you have one accident, there goes your multibillion dollar instrument down the toilet, because you have no one there to fix it," he says. "So as you can imagine, it's absolutely imperative that you make no mistakes in driving."
Carlson explains that part of the challenge to driving the rover by remote-control is that there's a time lag of a half hour to an hour between when something happens on Mars and when NASA can react here. "So you can't just say drive forward because if it's going toward a rock, you can't react that slowly, so the system is highly automated to avoid a lot of these obstacles."
NASA reports that Curiosity's first drive combined forward, turn and reverse movements. In total, it amounted to only about 20 feet, but it was the first step in a $2.5 billion, two-year trek that's expected to cover at least 12 miles. The rover's mission is to assess whether the area has ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.
