NASA Mars Curiosity Rover: Two Years and Counting on Red Planet

This image from the Navigation Camera on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows wheel tracks printed by the rover as it drove on the sandy floor of a lowland called "Hidden Valley" on the route toward Mount Sharp.  

Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech.

NASA's most advanced roving laboratory on Mars celebrates its second anniversary since landing inside the Red Planet's Gale Crater on Aug. 5, 2012, PDT (Aug. 6, 2012, EDT).

During its first year of operations, the Curiosity rover fulfilled its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

Clay-bearing sedimentary rocks on the crater floor in an area called Yellowknife Bay yielded evidence of a lakebed environment billions of years ago that offered fresh water, all of the key elemental ingredients for life, and a chemical source of energy for microbes, if any existed there.

"Before landing, we expected that we would need to drive much farther before answering that habitability question," said Curiosity Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

"We were able to take advantage of landing very close to an ancient streambed and lake. Now we want to learn more about how environmental conditions on Mars evolved, and we know where to go to do that."

During its second year, Curiosity has been driving toward long-term science destinations on lower slopes of Mount Sharp.

Those destinations are in an area beginning about 2 miles (3 kilometers) southwest of the rover's current location, but an appetizer outcrop of a base layer of the mountain lies much closer -- less than one-third of a mile (500 meters) from Curiosity. The rover team is calling the outcrop "Pahrump Hills."

For about half of July, the rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, drove Curiosity across an area of hazardous sharp rocks on Mars called "Zabriskie Plateau."

Damage to Curiosity's aluminum wheels from driving across similar terrain last year prompted a change in route, with the plan of skirting such rock-studded terrain wherever feasible.

The one-eighth mile (200 meters) across Zabriskie Plateau was one of the longest stretches without a suitable detour on the redesigned route toward the long-term science destination.

NASA NuSTAR: Celebrating two years of science in space

Artist's concept of NuSTAR on orbit.

NuSTAR has a 10-m (30') mast that deploys after launch to separate the optics modules (right) from the detectors in the focal plane (left). 

The spacecraft, which controls NuSTAR's pointings, and the solar panels are with the focal plane. 

NuSTAR has two identical optics modules to increase sensitivity. The background is an image of the Galactic center obtained with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), a premier black-hole hunter among other talents, has finished up its two-year prime mission, and will be moving onto its next phase, a two-year extension.

"It's hard to believe it's been two years since NuSTAR launched," said Fiona Harrison, the mission's principal investigator at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

"We achieved all the mission science objectives and made some amazing discoveries I never would have predicted two years ago."

In this new chapter of NuSTAR's life, it will continue to examine the most energetic objects in space, such as black holes and the pulsating remains of dead stars.

In addition, outside observers, astronomers not on the NuSTAR team, will be invited to compete for time on the telescope.

"NuSTAR will initiate a general observer program, which will start execution next spring and will take 50 percent of the observatory time," said Suzanne Dodd, the NuSTAR project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We are very excited to see what new science the community will propose to execute with NuSTAR."

NuSTAR blasted into space above the Pacific Ocean on June 13, 2012, with the help of a plane that boosted the observatory and its rocket to high altitudes.

After a 48-day checkout period, the telescope began collecting X-rays from black holes, supernova remnants, galaxy clusters and other exotic objects.

With its long mast - the length of a school bus, NuSTAR has a unique design that allows it to capture detailed data in the highest-energy range of X-rays, the same type used by dentists.

It is the most sensitive high-energy X-ray mission every flown.

In its prime mission, NuSTAR made the most robust measurements yet of the mind-bending spin rate of black holes and provided new insight into how massive stars slosh around before exploding.

Other observations include: the discovery of a highly magnetized neutron star near the center of our Milky Way galaxy, measurements of luminous active black holes enshrouded in dust, and serendipitous discoveries of supermassive black holes.