MSL Placed in Martian Simulation Chamber

The next mission scheduled to launch for Mars will this month get a taste of its future home, inside a specially-designed simulation chamber at a NASA lab in California. Throughout the trials, experts will keep track of how the new rover behaves under pressure.

Throughout March, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will remain in a Martian simulator at the American space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena. The Lab manages the mission.

The MSL, now called Curiosity, is scheduled to take off this fall, and to land on the Red Planet in early 2012. Now in its final stages of preparation, the rover is being put through its paces, so that engineers become confident they built a sturdy machine.

A large number of new technologies made their way onto the rover, as did a $2+ billion budget. As such, the tests the JPL team are putting Curiosity through are harsher than ever. They need to ensure that spacecraft has no weak link.

The chamber MSL is in right not is a 7.6-meter (25-foot) wide simulator, capable of subjecting anything within to a host of conditions identical to those on the Red Planet. Its simulations are based on data collected by other missions, such as the twin rovers and the two orbiters now at Mars.

Curiosity is now subjected to near-vacuum pressure levels, temperatures as low as minus 130 degrees Celsius (minus 202 degrees Fahrenheit), and excessive sunshine radiation.

After the simulation-chamber tests conclude, JPL experts will take the rover back to the Spacecraft Assembly Facility (SAF), where the other MSL components await integration. These include the cruise and descent stages, as well as the backshell modules.

At this point, the completed machine is scheduled for shipping to the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC), in Florida, during a window spanning from November 25 to December 18. The rover will undergo final preparations at the seaside spaceport.

Once it arrives on Mars, the Mini Cooper-sized rover will be capable of conducting a host of scientific experiments in astrobiology and geography, among other areas. It is powered by a nuclear reactor, as solar panels couldn't hope to produce the kind of energy the 1-ton machine needs to move.

MSL will feature a powerful laser, that will allow it to zap interesting rocks from a distance. The resulting smoke will then be analyzed via spectrometers, without the actual MSL needing to move.

The rover also features internal ovens, which will enable it to burn samples in search for signs of ancient Martian life.