In what must be one of NASA’s riskiest moves on Mars since sky-craning the nearly 2,000 pound Curiosity down to the Martian surface, the space agency will “likely” drive its rover over a sand dune blocking ”Dingo Gap” and the way to easier terrain.
“A final decision on whether to pass through this valley will ride on evaluation of a short drive planned this week toward the top of the dune that lies across ‘Dingo Gap.’ The dune is about 3 feet (1 meter) high at its center, tapered off at both sides of the gap between two low scarps,” NASA said yesterday.
Here’s zoomable image of the dune and gap:
It’s a risky move with a history, too. As the BBC points out,
The team is mindful that Nasa’s Spirit rover was lost in a sand trap in 2009.
And the Opportunity rover, which has just celebrated 10 working years on the planet, very nearly went the same way in 2005 when it became stuck for several weeks in a deep dirt pile later dubbed “Purgatory Dune”.
NASA is considering taking the risk because the rough Marian surface is taking its toll on the craft’s wheels (see photo in gallery above).
The agency said in January when it first approached Dingo Gap:
Curiosity is on a southwestward traverse of many months from an area where it found evidence of ancient conditions favorable for microbial life to its long-term science destination on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp. Based on analysis of images taken from orbit by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a location dubbed “Dingo Gap” was assessed as a possible gateway to a favorable route for the next portion of the traverse.
Well, here’s wishing them good luck. Curiosity is roughly 17 months into it’s primary 23-month mission and has travel a bit more than 3 miles. The rover met one of its primary scientific goals nearly a year ago in March when “an analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA’s Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes.” As we reported then:
NASA hasn’t found direct evidence of life on Mars, but it has found that Mars could have supported life.
“We have characterized a very ancient, but strangely new ‘gray Mars’ where conditions once were favorable for life,” said John Grotzinger, Mars Science Laboratory project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.
In other words – water that could have sustained life.
“Probably, had this water been around and you had been on the planet, you would have been able to drink it,” Grotzinger said at the live press conference.
“This is probably definitively the only habitable environment that we have recorded” off Earth, said David Blake, principal investigator for Curiosity’s Chemistry and Mineralogy investigation.
Oh, and, here’s some of the silly things others think NASA has photographed on Mars:
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