Nasa's Curiosity rover has celebrated its first anniversary on Mars by using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to 'sing' Happy Birthday by vibrating at different frequencies.
The rover completed its dramatic descent to land safely on the red planet one year ago and has already achieved its mission aim by discovering that Mars could have supported life.
Curiosity, which is about the size of a small car, is also sending back information about its surroundings to inform future missions to Mars.
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Nasa's Curiosity rover (pictured) has celebrated its first anniversary on Mars by using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to 'sing' Happy Birthday by vibrating at different frequencies
Nasa administrator Charles Bolden, said: Successes of our Curiosity - that dramatic touchdown a year ago and the science findings since then - advance us toward further exploration, including sending humans to an asteroid and Mars...Wheel tracks now, will lead to boot prints later.'
Curiosity landed in the Gale crater on Mars on 6 August 2012 after being guided some 450 million kilometres away, to within 80m of the planet's atmosphere.
Speaking at the Royal Academy of Engineering last year, Dr Charles Elachi, director of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said: 'The accuracy with which we have to point, to be at the right angle and the right location, is equivalent to me being in LA and hitting a golf ball to St Andrews here in the UK - and the ball landing in a cup that is moving at around 60,000mph, because Mars is moving.'
Curiosity has traveled around one mile in the past year. This map shows where the rover has been between landing at 'Bradbury Landing' on 6 August last year and the position reached during the mission's 351st Martian day on 1 August 2013
'Landing on another planet is not a walk in the park...we have about 3 tonnes of mass coming in at a speed of almost 12,000mph and we have to land softly within six minutes.'
Scientists at Nasa used a ground-breaking 'sky crane' carrier to lower the rover to the Martian surface.
Since then, the mobile laboratory has provided more than 190 gigabits of data, returned more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images, fired more than 75,000 laser shots to investigate the composition of targets, collected and analyzed sample material from two rocks and driven more than one mile.
Since landing, Curiosity has shown us a view of Mars that has never been seen before. So far, the diminutive rover has returned more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images. This scene of 7 photos taken in march shows Twin Cairns Island - the two central rocks
The rover has traveled almost 700 metres in the past month since leaving an area of the moon where it has been analysing rocks for around six months.
It is now trundling along to its final destination - Mount Sharp - where it will look at the lower layers of the mountain that towers over the centre of Gale Crater by almost three and a half miles.
Mount Sharp is of interest to scientists because its layers of rock can reveal information about the planet's changing environment over time.
So far, Curiosity has provided more than 190 gigabits of data, returned more than 36,700 full images and 35,000 thumbnail images, fired more than 75,000 laser shots to investigate the composition of targets, collected and analyzed sample material from two rocks and driven more than one mile
Certain layers have been identified by Mars orbiters as originating in a wet environment.
The rover first examined ground nearer the crater where it quickly found signs of 'vigorous ancient stream flow' - the first streambed pebble deposits ever examined up-close on Mars.
Evidence of a past environment well suited to support microbial life came within the first eight months of the 23-month primary mission from analysis of the first sample material ever collected by drilling into a rock on Mars.
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity used the Navigation Camera to take this photo in July. The mission's project scientist, said: 'We now know Mars offered favorable conditions for microbial life billions of years ago. It has been gratifying to succeed, but that has also whetted our appetites to learn more'
CURIOSITY BY NUMBERS
- The rover's top speed is 1.5 inches per second
- Curiosity is the fourth rover to visit Mars
- It took around seven minutes to land on Mars
- The rover is fitted with 17 cameras
- It weighs about the same as a Mini Cooper at approximately 1,982 pounds
- Scientists considered 60 possible landing sites before deciding on Gale Crater
- The mission is planned to last 697 days
The mission's project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said: 'We now know Mars offered favorable conditions for microbial life billions of years ago.'
'It has been gratifying to succeed, but that has also whetted our appetites to learn more.
'We hope those enticing layers at Mount Sharp will preserve a broad diversity of other environmental conditions that could have affected habitability.'
The rover is also gathering information that might pave the way for a human mission to Mars in the future and is measuring natural radiation levels and weather on the surface of Mars.
Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near the lower right corner of this view of Mars from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The rover's tracks are visible extending from the landing site in the left half of the scene. Two bright, relatively blue spots surrounded by darker patches are where the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's landing jets cleared away reddish surface dust at the landing site
The mission also found evidence Mars lost most of its original atmosphere through processes that occurred at the top of the atmosphere.
Nasa's next mission to Mars, Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN), is being prepared for launch in November to study those processes in the upper atmosphere.
Members of the team behind Curiosity at JPL in California will re-live the dramatic landing and mission in a programme that will air on Nasa TV and JPL's website at 10.45 to 12 pm today.
Another event on Nasa TV from noon until 1.30pm will feature Nasa officials and crew members aboard the International Space Station as they observe the rover anniversary and discuss how its activities and other robotic projects are helping prepare for a human mission to Mars and an asteroid.
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