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SALT LAKE CITY — Get ready for one of the best space rides of all time.
The Mars rover "Curiosity" landed on the red planet on Sunday night, and we'll all have great seats for its discoveries.
After a flight of more than eight months, the rover landed on the rocky, dusty terrain of our galactic neighbor Mars. The landing alone was a stellar achievement, and now, Curiosity is looking for signs of life.
"We're going to be along for the ride of a lifetime as we explore Mars," said Clark Planetarium director Seth Jarvis.
After a spectacular descent, the $2.5 billion nuclear- powered vehicle got to work. The rover is the size of an SUV, packed with tools and equipment.
"It's going to be drilling holes in rocks, sniffing [around] and taking pictures. We're going to fill encyclopedia volumes with what we're going to learn about Mars from this," said Jarvis. "There's a lot of really weird, bizarre, alien, exciting stuff going on on Mars. This thing is going to take us there, and we're going to live it every day."
"There's going to be a surprise that no one could have anticipated, and that suddenly is going to say, 'I'm so glad we did this'", - Seth Jarvis, Clark Planetarium director
Curiosity is the most technologically advanced robotic scientific laboratory ever launched. It's on a two-year exploration mission searching for carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and other building blocks of life.
"Was Mars ever habitable? Is there evidence of recent water activity? Was their organic chemistry going on the Matrian soil? What's the atmosphere like? There's always something that completely catches us off-guard. There's going to be a surprise that no one could have anticipated, and that suddenly is going to say, ‘I'm so glad we did this'", said Jarvis.
Already, black-and-white snapshots have been transmitted back to Earth from Curiosity, including one of the rover casting a shadow on the surface of the planet. Curiosity has precise plans, and detailed experiments, but the greatest discoveries may come from out of nowhere.
