The newest of NASA’s Mars rovers has launched. Curiosity’s mission has been called the “precursor to human exploration” on Mars. Boise native Dan Isla is a systems engineer with NASA. He gave some of the commands during Curiosity’s launch. He says before people can go to Mars, NASA has to prove they can land large cargos on the red planet.
By proving the technology works, Isla says they will be able to deploy supplies and cargo to people who might colonize the Red Planet in the future.
Curiosity is the third rover to visit Mars. It weighs over two-thousand pounds. It can do way more than its predecessors.
“We’re going to really determine if Mars ever was a habitable environment for life so the previous rovers didn’t have the technology or instrumentation to really determine that,” says Isla.
Curiosity isn’t slated to arrive on Mars until August of 2012. Then it will start exploring Gale Crater and the mountains that rise above it.