What makes curiosity different

A self-portrait of Curiosity on a Martian sand dune. At this site, it used instruments to scoop up and study sand samples. The Mars Rovers: Curiosity. The Short Answer:. Curiosity is a rover that was sent to Mars to determine if the Red Planet ever had the proper conditions for microbial life to survive. Meet the Mars Rovers. If you liked this, you may like: The Mars Rovers: Sojourner. What Is a Meteor Shower?

As well, its robotic arm is 2. The computing power on Curiosity has also been given a considerable boost. It has has two main computers and will use one at a time, with the other as backup. There is eight times as much flash memory on Curiosity as on Spirit and Opportunity.

Curiosity also has a radiation detector that is designed to give scientists a better sense of radiation levels on the Red Planet, something that has never been fully assessed and is considered important in planning for possible human exploration. Canada's contribution — the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer — is also a new and improved version of the APXS used on the older rovers to identify chemical elements in rock and soil.

There are two things to remember. Therefore, you cannot find those answers on the internet or Wikipedia. The other thing is that what the internet allows us to do is to satisfy what has been dubbed specific curiosity, namely you want to know a very particular detail.

Who wrote this or that book? What was the name of the actor in that film? The digital age allows you to find the answer very quickly. There are times when we become obsessed with wanting to know what that information is. In that sense, the digital age helps us because we can find that information, and that may drive us to look for something else about this.

And that would drive perhaps epistemic curiosity, which is this love of knowledge and wanting to learn new things. Knowledge Wharton: Do you think love of knowledge is truly the driving force behind curiosity and the other pieces are part of the spider web off the core?

Livio: Not necessarily. There have been all kinds of experiments in neuroscience with functional MRI, where they make people curious then put them in these MRI machines and see which parts of their brains are activated. Knowledge Wharton: When you think historically, there have been world leaders who have wanted to snuff out curiosity.

Some people would say President Trump is trying to do that. Have you seen that as a component in the world? Livio: Of course. We all know about the Middle Ages, the medieval times when curiosity was almost taken out of existence.

It was mostly the church that wanted to convey to the masses the feeling that everything worth knowing is already known. They built walls around all types of knowledge and really oppressed curiosity in this way. The Taliban destroyed works of art. There have been book burnings over the years.

The Nazis made a degenerate art exhibit where they tried to deface all the modern painters. There definitely have been oppressive regimes and ideologies that try to stifle curiosity. Livio: Yes. I mentioned already two of those types of curiosity: perceptual and epistemic. There is also something that has been dubbed diversive curiosity. There is a negative to diversive curiosity because your attention is turned away. But there is the element of searching or looking for information.

They connect with friends. They connect with people, sometimes across countries. Knowledge Wharton: Do you think it affects curiosity in general because it has become such an attractive piece to our society? The landing assembly dangled the rover below the rockets using a foot 6 m tether. Falling at 1. NASA personnel tensely watched the rover's descent on live television. When they received confirmation that Curiosity was safe, engineers pumped fists and jumped up and down in jubilation.

News of the landing spread through traditional outlets, such as newspapers and television, as well as social media, such as Twitter and Facebook. One engineer became famous because of the Mohawk he sported on landing day. The rover has a few tools to search for habitability.

Among them is an experiment that bombards the surface with neutrons , which would slow down if they encountered hydrogen atoms: one of the elements of water. Curiosity's 7-foot arm can pick up samples from the surface and cook them inside the rover, sniffing the gases that come out of there and analyzing them for clues as to how the rocks and soil formed.

The Sample Analysis of Mars instrument , if it does pick up evidence of organic material, can double-check that. On Curiosity's front, under foil covers, are several ceramic blocks infused with artificial organic compounds.

Curiosity can drill into each of these blocks and place a sample into its oven to measure its composition. Researchers will then see if organics appear that were not supposed to be in the block. If so, scientists will likely determine these are organisms hitchhiking from Earth. High-resolution cameras surrounding the rover take pictures as it moves, providing visual information that can be compared to environments on Earth. This was used when Curiosity found evidence of a streambed , for example.

In September , Curiosity arrived at its science destination, Mount Sharp Aeolis Mons shortly after a NASA science review said the rover should do less driving and more searching for habitable destinations.

It is now carefully evaluating the layers on the slope as it moves uphill. The goal is to see how the climate of Mars changed from a wet past to the drier, acidic conditions of today. Curiosity's prime mission is to determine if Mars is, or was, suitable for life. While it is not designed to find life itself, the rover carries a number of instruments on board that can bring back information about the surrounding environment.

Scientists hit something close to the jackpot in early , when the rover beamed back information showing that Mars had habitable conditions in the past. Powder from the first drill samples that Curiosity obtained included the elements of sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon, which are all considered "building blocks" or fundamental elements that could support life.

While this is not evidence of life itself, the find was still exciting to the scientists involved in the mission. Scientists also detected a huge spike in methane levels on Mars in late and early , at a level of about 7 parts per billion compared to the usual 0. This was a notable finding because in some circumstances, methane is an indicator of microbial life.