“Now that we knew there was liquid water on the surface of Mars, could Mars have supported life?” he said. In 2011, NASA launched Curiosity, “a different rover with a different rover mission,” Boykins said. Technology improvements: Curiosity and Perseverance The rock was left unstudied, as “we didn’t have the right scientific investigation materials or scientific apparatus” on the rovers to assess it, he said. The find sparked much conversation among scientists who wanted to study the rock and engineers who were unsure of its makeup and therefore couldn’t predict the consequences of closer examination. “This is a meteorite from somewhere else,” Boykins said. It also discovered something surprising, he said - a solitary rock that was not from Mars. Opportunity, which explored years longer than Spirit, found a mineral called hematite, Boykins said. Once on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity proved there was once water on Mars, one of the missions’ principal goals. The front wheels were among the last parts to deploy, preparing the rover to drive off and begin exploring, Boykins said. The airbags were then pulled in and lander petals were unfolded, followed by solar panels. The rover was then lowered via the parachute and airbags were inflated, allowing the rover to bounce to the surface under gravity less than 40 percent that of Earth. The rover threw out a supersonic parachute, slowing it down, and lost the heat shield. “Literally burning a hole” in the atmosphere, each rover, encased in a shield against the 1,600-degree centigrade heat, then began a process of “reverse origami,” Boykins said. Each took about seven months, traveling at 16,000 mph, to reach the upper atmosphere of Mars. Spirit and Opportunity were launched in 2003.
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