Rover Curiosity just hours from Mars

(CNN) -- Humanity's curiosity about Mars has led to an exciting event: the dramatic landing of an SUV-sized rover, set for 1:31 a.m. ET Monday.

NASA's $2.6 billion rover, Curiosity, will make its dramatic entrance into Martian territory in a spectacle popularly known as the "seven minutes of terror." This jaw-dropping landing process, involving a sky crane and the world's largest supersonic parachute, allows the spacecraft carrying Curiosity to target the landing area that scientists have meticulously chosen.

The spacecraft is "healthy and right on course," according to the latest update from NASA. Curiosity has been traveling away from Earth since November 26.

The vehicle, which will be controlled from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has a full suite of sophisticated tools for exploring Mars. They include 17 cameras, a laser that can survey the composition of rocks from a distance and instruments that can analyze samples from soil or rocks.

Meet a rover driver: His car is on Mars

If all goes according to plan, Curiosity's first stop will be Gale Crater, which may have once contained a lake. After at least a year, the rover will arrive at Mount Sharp, in the center of the crater. The rover will drive up the mountain examining layers of sediment. This process is like looking at a historical record because each layer represents an era of the planet's history, scientists say.

<cite class="expCaption">Mars, NASA's most ambitious mission</cite>

<cite class="expCaption">Mars in pop culture</cite>

<cite class="expCaption">The Number: "Curiosity" Mars landing</cite>

<cite class="expCaption">Bill Nye and the 'PB&J' of space</cite>

The phenomenon of sedimentary layers is remarkably similar to what is seen on Earth, in California's Death Valley or in Montana's Glacier National Park, says John Grotzinger, chief scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Rocks and minerals found on Earth are different than on Mars, but the idea of a mountain made of layers is familiar to scientists. Unlike on Earth, however, Mars has no plate tectonics, so the Martian layers are flat and not disrupted as they would be on Earth. That also means that Mount Sharp was formed in a different way than how mountains are created on Earth -- no one knows how.

Images: Exploring Mars

In these layers, scientists are looking for organic molecules, which are necessary to create life. But even if Curiosity finds them, that's not proof that life existed -- after all, these molecules are found in bus exhaust and meteorites, too, says Steve Squyres, part of the Mars Science Laboratory science team.

If there aren't any organics, that may suggest there's something on the planet destroying these molecules, says James Wray, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and collaborator on the Curiosity science team. But if Curiosity detects them, Wray said, that might help scientists move from asking, "Was Mars ever habitable?" to "Did Mars actually host life?"

Liquid water is not something scientists expect to be apparent on Mars because the planet is so cold and dry, Squyres said. If the planet does harbor liquid water today, it would have to be deep below the surface, perhaps peeking out in a few special places, but not likely to be seen by Curiosity, Squyres said.

Rover to search for clues to life on Mars

It's hard to know how long ago liquid water would have been there because there's no mechanism to date the rocks that rovers find on Mars, Squyres said.

Evidence from the spacecraft NASA has sent to Mars so far suggests that the "warm and wet" period on Mars lasted for the first billion years of the planet's history.

"In order to create life, you need both the right environmental conditions -- which includes liquid water -- and you need the building blocks from which life is built, which includes organics," Squyres said. The Mars Science Laboratory is a precursor mission to sharper technology that could do life detection, Grotzinger said.

There aren't specific molecules that scientists are looking for with Curiosity. The attitude is: "Let's go to an interesting place with good tools and find out what's there," Squyres said.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was swarming with media this past week as scientists and journalists prepared for signs of the rover's landing. Squyres and a colleague told each other Thursday they were both feeling "full of hope and optimism."

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory wasn't the only place anxiously awaiting the rover's arrival Sunday night. Nearly 200 people gathered at Georgia Tech in Atlanta to hear presentations about planetary science and the search for water away from Earth in the final hours before the landing. Other parties were planned around the world.

What do you think about the Mars mission? Go to iReport

Sunday also happens to be the 82nd birthday of former NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong. It's hoped the birthday will be auspicious for the landing, NASA's John Grunsfeld said in a news conference.

Curiosity is supposed to last for two years on Mars, but it may operate longer -- after all, Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived on Mars in 2004, were each only supposed to last 90 Martian days. Spirit stopped communicating with NASA in 2010 after getting stuck in sand, and Opportunity is still going.

"You take what Mars gives you," said Squyres, also the lead scientist on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, which includes Spirit and Opportunity. "If we knew what we were going to find, it wouldn't be this much fun."

They are working for China...

NASA's rover Curiosity lands on Mars

<cite id="galleryCaption001">One of the first images beamed back from NASA's Curiosity rover on August 6 is a photo of the shadow cast by the rover on the surface of Mars.</cite>

 

 

CNN.com/Live and CNN Mobile for live coverage of Curiosity's landing on Mars.

(CNN) -- NASA's rover Curiosity successfully carried out a highly challenging landing on Mars early Monday, transmitting images back to Earth after traveling hundreds of millions of miles through space in order to explore the Red Planet.

The $2.6 billion Curiosity made its dramatic arrival on Martian terrain in a spectacle popularly known as the "seven minutes of terror."

This jaw-dropping landing process, involving a sky crane and the world's largest supersonic parachute, allowed the spacecraft carrying Curiosity to target the landing area that scientists had meticulously chosen.

The mission control in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California burst into cheers as the rover touched down. Team members hugged and high-fived one another as Curiosity beamed back the first pictures from the planet, some shed tears.

<cite class="expCaption">NASA rover 'Curiosity' lands on Mars</cite>

<cite class="expCaption">NASA administrator: 'We're on Mars'</cite>

<cite class="expCaption">Mars, NASA's most ambitious mission</cite>

"The successful landing of Curiosity -- the most sophisticated roving laboratory ever to land on another planet -- marks an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future," President Barack Obama said in a statement congratulating the NASA employees who had worked on the project.

The scientific community reacted to the achievement with a mixture of elation and relief.

"Rationally I know it was supposed to work all along, but emotionally it always seemed completely crazy," said James Wray, assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, who is affiliated with the science team of Curiosity. "So to see all those steps being ticked off and actually working, it's a huge relief."

The initial images the SUV-sized rover sent back to Earth were black and white and grainy, but one showed its wheel resting on the stony ground and the vehicle's shadow appeared in another. Larger color images are expected later in the week, NASA said.

The spacecraft had been traveling away from Earth since November 26 on a journey of approximately 352 million miles (567 million kilometers), according to NASA.

Curiosity, which will be controlled from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has a full suite of sophisticated tools for exploring Mars. They include 17 cameras, a laser that can survey the composition of rocks from a distance and instruments that can analyze samples from soil or rocks.

The aim of its work is "to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms," NASA says.

Meet a rover driver: His car is on Mars

Curiosity's first stop is Gale Crater, which may have once contained a lake. After at least a year, the rover will arrive at Mount Sharp, in the center of the crater. The rover will drive up the mountain examining layers of sediment. This process is like looking at a historical record because each layer represents an era of the planet's history, scientists say.

The phenomenon of sedimentary layers is remarkably similar to what is seen on Earth, in California's Death Valley or in Montana's Glacier National Park, says John Grotzinger, chief scientist of the Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Rocks and minerals found on Earth are different than on Mars, but the idea of a mountain made of layers is familiar to scientists. Unlike on Earth, however, Mars has no plate tectonics, so the Martian layers are flat and not disrupted as they would be on Earth. That also means that Mount Sharp was formed in a different way than how mountains are created on Earth -- no one knows how.

Images: Exploring Mars

In these layers, scientists are looking for organic molecules, which are necessary to create life. But even if Curiosity finds them, that's not proof that life existed -- after all, these molecules are found in bus exhaust and meteorites, too, says Steve Squyres, part of the Mars Science Laboratory science team.

If there aren't any organics, that may suggest there's something on the planet destroying these molecules, said Wray, of Georgia Tech. But if Curiosity detects them, Wray said, that might help scientists move from asking, "Was Mars ever habitable?" to "Did Mars actually host life?"

Curiosity's mission is also significant in an era when NASA's budgets are shrinking and China is becoming more ambitious in its space exploration program.

"I feel like it's a signal that we have the capability to do big and exciting things in the future." said Carol Paty, assistant professor at Georgia Tech's School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "You can't not be excited."

Liquid water is not something scientists expect to be apparent on Mars because the planet is so cold and dry, Squyres said. If the planet does harbor liquid water today, it would have to be deep below the surface, perhaps peeking out in a few special places, but not likely to be seen by Curiosity, Squyres said.

Rover to search for clues to life on Mars

It's hard to know how long ago liquid water would have been there because there's no mechanism to date the rocks that rovers find on Mars, Squyres said.

Evidence from the spacecraft NASA has sent to Mars so far suggests that the "warm and wet" period on Mars lasted for the first billion years of the planet's history.

"In order to create life, you need both the right environmental conditions -- which includes liquid water -- and you need the building blocks from which life is built, which includes organics," Squyres said. The Mars Science Laboratory is a precursor mission to sharper technology that could do life detection, Grotzinger said.

There aren't specific molecules that scientists are looking for with Curiosity. The attitude is: "Let's go to an interesting place with good tools and find out what's there," Squyres said.

What do you think about the Mars mission? Go to iReport

Curiosity is supposed to last for two years on Mars, but it may operate longer -- after all, Spirit and Opportunity, which arrived on Mars in 2004, were each only supposed to last 90 Martian days. Spirit stopped communicating with NASA in 2010 after getting stuck in sand, and Opportunity is still going.

"You take what Mars gives you," said Squyres, also the lead scientist on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, which includes Spirit and Opportunity. "If we knew what we were going to find, it wouldn't be this much fun."

The are working for Humanity. China never does.

China will be working on trying to steal the technology.

You and the other loonie Henry, will soon be celebrating China landing on the moon.

You are totally right about my celebrating.

NASA's $2.6 billion rover.  Expensive Range Rover! 

It is expected to work almost autonomously 154 million or 14 light minutes away.  It was designed with an MTBF of 2 years and expected to be functioning for 14 years. It has cloaking strategies  for its 17 cameras. redundant computer and communications system to endure over 300 degrees F diurnal flip-flop of the temperature and to evade pervasive dust storms some lasting months. No, it is far from a range rover.

Lucas was out protesting

Nice one

One way trip... nothing China cannot do.

The real challenge is the return trip.

While millions are unemployed.

Even if NASA was never existed millions would still be unemployed. You can't put a prize tag on exploration and learning in the scientific world.

What benefits will Mars bring us ? 

You have to appreciate space and science to understand the full benefit Mars mission will do for human race.

OOPS!

The return trip is not problematic. We know how to do that.  It is the resources to stay there with redundancies. 

The Chinese cannot yet build a heavy lift rocket and they are still to have extended stay in near orbit.

Who cares whether they return or not anyway? Do as said above, leave 'em a few Mars bars,etc.

the moon landings give us practically all of the science we currently exploit. Mars offer the possibility to explore science in areas not yet available. We get hardened computers, better communications, more efficient robotics, novel chemistry etc. 

Further, we have to prepare for extinction events on our planet and how we are to survive. Our imperative is to survive.

First images emerge of NASA Curiosity rover’s manoeuvres during ‘seven minutes of terror’

Alicia Chang, Associated Press | Aug 6, 2012 4:34 PM ET | Last Updated: Aug 6, 2012 4:35 PM ET -- Source

This August 6, 2012 NASA image shows Curiosity rover and its parachute, spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as Curiosity descended to the surface on August 5, PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured this image of Curiosity while the orbiter was listening to transmissions from the rover. Curiosity and its parachute are in the center of the white box; the inset image is a cutout of the rover stretched to avoid saturation.

PASADENA, Calif. — The robotic explorer Curiosity’s daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist who described the first images of its gymnastics through the so-called “seven minutes of terror.”

Hours after the U.S. space agency learned the rover had arrived on target late Sunday, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate manoeuvres it made to hit the Martian soil safely.

“It’s a spectacular image,” said NASA research scientist Luther Beegle. The photo, taken from an orbiting Mars spacecraft, shows Curiosity dangling from its supersonic parachute as it descended.

Extraordinary efforts were needed for the landing because the rover weighs about one tonne, and the Martian atmosphere is very thin, not offering much friction to slow the spacecraft down.

The arrival was an engineering tour de force, debuting never-before-tried acrobatics as Curiosity sliced through the Martian atmosphere at 20,900 km/h.

More images, including video of the landing and beautiful colour shots of Mars, will follow in days to come. It will be weeks before Curiosity starts digging into the red planet’s past.

Cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after signals from space indicated Curiosity had survived the plunge.

“Touchdown confirmed,” said engineer Allen Chen. “We’re safe on Mars.”

NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images

In this handout image provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech, one of the first images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars on the evening of August 5, 2012 PDT and transmitted to Spaceflight Operations Facility for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

 

Minutes after the landing signal reached Earth, Curiosity beamed back the first black-and-white pictures from inside the crater showing its wheel and its shadow, cast by the afternoon sun.

“We landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful, really beautiful,” said engineer Adam Steltzner, who led the team that devised the landing routine.

It was NASA’s seventh landing on Earth’s neighbour; many attempts by the U.S. and other countries to zip past, circle or set down on Mars have gone awry.

In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground at a snail-paced 3.2 km/h. A video camera was set to capture the most dramatic moments.

JPL Director Charles Elachi compared the team to Olympic athletes.

“This team came back with the gold,” he said.

Gilles Leclerc, director-general of space exploration at the Canadian Space Agency, said workers there were celebrating as well, having spent years working on a device aboard Curiosity that will help look for signs of life.

“Well, we’re Canadians, eh? So it was less enthusiastic but I would say it was as emotional as it was in the U.S. But there were cheers indeed and it was again a great moment.”

Still, he said from Longueuil, Que., there were some tense moments.

“The seven minutes of terror that we had been told to expect turned into a triumph in the end because it was a very daring landing technique and it was successful … so we were all very ecstatic.”

The extraterrestrial feat injected a much-needed boost to NASA, which is debating whether it can afford another robotic Mars landing this decade. At a budget-busting $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the priciest gamble yet, which scientists hope will pay off with a bonanza of discoveries and pave the way for astronaut landings.

President Barack Obama called the landing “an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future.”

Over the next two years, Curiosity will drive over to a mountain rising from the crater floor, poke into rocks and scoop up rust-tinted soil to see if the region ever had the right environment for microscopic organisms to thrive.

It’s the latest chapter in the long-running quest to find out whether primitive life arose early in the planet’s history.

The voyage to Mars took more than eight months.

NASA’s last Mars rovers, twins Spirit and Opportunity, weighed much less and were easier to land back in 2004, cocooned in air bags.

Curiosity relied on a series of braking tricks, similar to those used by the space shuttle, a heat shield and a supersonic parachute to slow down as it punched through the atmosphere.

And in a new twist, engineers came up with a way to lower the rover by cable from a hovering rocket-powered backpack. At touchdown, the cords cut and the rocket stage crashed a distance away.

The nuclear-powered Curiosity, the size of a small car, is packed with scientific tools, cameras and a weather station. It sports a robotic arm with a power drill, a laser that can zap distant rocks, a chemistry lab to sniff for the chemical building blocks of life and a detector to measure dangerous radiation on the surface.

It also tracked radiation levels during the journey to help NASA better understand the risks astronauts could face on a future manned trip.

There will be several weeks of health checkups before the six-wheel rover takes its first short drive and flexes its robotic arm.

The landing site near Mars’ equator was picked because there are signs of past water everywhere, meeting one of the requirements for life as we know it.

Previous trips to Mars have uncovered ice near the Martian north pole and evidence that water once flowed when the planet was wetter and toastier, unlike today’s harsh, frigid desert environment.

Curiosity’s goal: to scour for basic ingredients essential for life including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and oxygen. It’s not equipped to search for living or fossil microorganisms.

The mission comes as NASA retools its Mars exploration strategy. Faced with tough economic times, the space agency pulled out of partnership with the European Space Agency to land a rock-collecting rover in 2018. The Europeans have since teamed with the Russians as NASA decides on a new roadmap.

Despite Mars’ reputation as a spacecraft graveyard, humans continue their love affair with the planet, lobbing spacecraft in search of clues about its early history. Out of more than three dozen attempts _ flybys, orbiters and landings _ by the U.S., Soviet Union, Europe and Japan since the 1960s, more than half have ended disastrously.

One NASA rover that defied expectations is Opportunity, which is still busy wheeling around the rim of a crater in the Martian southern hemisphere eight years later.

THE LANDING

“I can’t believe this. This is unbelievable,” enthused Allen Chen, the deputy head of the rover’s descent and landing team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.

Moments later, Curiosity beamed back its first three images from the Martian surface, one of them showing a wheel of the vehicle and the rover’s shadow cast on the rocky terrain.

NASA put the official landing time of Curiosity, touted as the first full-fledged mobile science laboratory sent to a distant world, at 10:32 p.m. Pacific time (1:32 a.m. EDT/0532 GMT).

NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images

IN SPACE - AUGUST 5: In this handout image provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech, one of the first images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars on the evening of August 5, 2012 PDT and transmitted to Spaceflight Operations Facility for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

 

“It’s an enormous step forward in planetary exploration. Nobody has ever done anything like this,” said John Holdren, the top science advisor to President Barack Obama, who was visiting JPL for the event. “It was an incredible performance.”

NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images

 

In this handout image provided by NASA/JPL-Caltech, one of the first images taken by NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars on the evening of August 5, 2012 PDT and transmitted to Spaceflight Operations Facility for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

 

CHECKUP FOR CURIOSITY BEFORE IT ROVES

While Curiosity rover appears to have landed intact, its exact condition was still to be ascertained.

NASA plans to put the one-ton, six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover and its sophisticated instruments through several weeks of engineering checks before starting its two-year surface mission in earnest.

“We’re going to make sure that we’re firing on all cylinders before we blaze out across the plains,” lead scientist John Grotzinger said.

Launched on Nov. 26 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the robotic lab sailed through space for more than eight months, covering 566 million km, before piercing Mars’ thin atmosphere at 20,921 km per hour — 17 times the speed of sound — and starting its descent.

AFP PHOTO / ROBYN BECK ROBYN BECK/AFP/GettyImages

 

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Project Manager Pete Theisinger (C) and deputy project manager Adam Steltzner (R) celebrate with members of the Mars Rover Curiosity entry, descent and landing (EDL) team (foreground) after the Mars Rover Curiosity successfully landed on the surface of the Red Planet on August 5, 2012 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

 

Encased in a protective capsule-like shell, the craft utilized a first-of-its kind automated flight-entry system to sharply reduce its speed.

Then the probe rode a huge, supersonic parachute into the lower atmosphere before a jet-powered backpack NASA called a “sky crane” carried Curiosity most of the rest of the way to its destination, lowering it to the ground by nylon tethers.

’SEVEN MINUTES OF TERROR’

When the rover’s wheels were planted firmly on the ground, the cords were cut and the sky crane flew a safe distance away and crashed.

The sequence also involved 79 pyrotechnic detonations to release exterior ballast weights, open the parachute, separate the heat shield, detach the craft’s back shell, jettison the parachute and other functions. The failure of any one of those would have doomed the landing, JPL engineers said.

NASA sardonically referred the unorthodox seven-minute descent and landing sequence as “seven minutes of terror.”

With a 14-minute delay in the time it takes for radio waves from Earth to reach Mars 248 million km away, NASA engineers had little to do during Curiosity’s descent but anxiously track its progress.

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

 

Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity members from left: Richard Cook, MSL deputy project manager, Adam Steltzner, MSL entry, descent and landing (EDL) lead and John Grotzinger, MSL project scientist, California Institute of Technology, from the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity Rover mission team celebrate the landing of Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012.

 

By the time they received radio confirmation of Curiosity’s safe landing, relayed to Earth by a NASA satellite orbiting Mars, the craft already had been on the ground for seven minutes.

NASA engineers said the intricate and elaborate landing system used by Curiosity was necessary because of its size and weight.

Over twice as large and five times heavier than either of the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity that landed on Mars in 2004, Curiosity weighed too much to be bounced to the surface in airbags or fly itself all the way down with rocket thrusters — systems successfully used by six previous NASA landers, engineers said.

Curiosity is designed to spend the next two years exploring Gale Crater and an unusual (5 km-) high mountain consisting of what appears to be sediments rising from the crater’s floor.

Its primary mission is to look for evidence that Mars — the planet most similar to Earth — may have once hosted the basic building blocks necessary for microbial life to evolve.

The rover comes equipped with an array of sophisticated instruments capable of analyzing samples of soil, rocks and atmosphere on the spot and beaming results back to Earth.

One is a laser gun that can zap a rock from 7 meters away to create a spark whose spectral image is analyzed by a special telescope to discern the mineral’s chemical composition.

Mission controllers were joined by 1,400 scientists, engineers and dignitaries who tensely waited at JPL to learn Curiosity’s fate, among them film star Morgan Freeman, television’s “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, comic actor Seth Green and actress June Lockhart of “Lost in Space” fame. Another 5,000 people watched from the nearby California Institute of Technology, the academic home of JPL.

“There are many out in the community who say that NASA has lost its way, that we don’t know how to explore, that we’ve lost our moxie. I think it’s fair to say that NASA knows how to explore, we’ve been exploring and we’re on Mars,” former astronaut and NASA’s associate administrator for science, John Grunsfeld, told reporters shortly after the touchdown.

With Files from The Associated Press and Reuters

Been there, done that. Welcome to the 1960's.

We're in 2012 if you haven't yet realized it.

Yes, but in case you haven't noticed, the Americans cannot even go back to the moon. The Chinese on the other hand are planning a lunar base, using the moon as natural space station.

Like I said, been there, done that. If the Americans wanted to go to the moon, they would be there.

We're exploring way beyond the moon now, Mars and beyond the reaches of the solar system. Meanwhile, the Chinese can't even figure out how to get to the moon yet. Even after they stole the technology from the Americans.

The landing was certainly one of the most amazing events in science. Can't wait to hear more.

Very likely they never went to the moon...how you could in the 60's and cannot go now when technology is more advanced and affordable?

I expected a loonie like you to think that the moon landing was done on a movie set. No surprise there.

They are exploring way beyond the moon silly man. If they wanted to go back to the moon right now, they'd be there tomorrow. For now, we're way advanced past that. Leave the moon for the mentally challenged like you and your Chinese buddies. Right now it's Mars and the edge of the solar system, something the Chinese can only dream about doing.

They cannot go back to the moon tomorrow. There was a plan to go back to the moon in 2020, called Orion Project, but was crapped due to lack of resources.

If they wanted to go tomorrow they would need to use Russian rockets, but that'd only take them to the ISS.  Currently NASA is paying the Russians for missions to the ISS. US is a Hyperpower in quick decline, almost on a free fall. I put all my hopes on China for the goal of humans traveling to the planets since America will not have time, it will have declined by then.

Like ?

Dude, like you stewpidy. The moon is a low priority for NASA now. They are going way beyond the moon, something the Chinese can only dream about. More than 40 years later and the Chinese are not even close to reaching the moon, while American is already at Mars and the outer limits of the solar system. You're putting your hopes on the Chinese reaching the planets when they can't even figure out how to get to the moon. You'll be dead before the Chinese can steal the technology and figure out how to reach to the planets.

BTW, America is developing private firms to travel to the ISS. Ease up on the mushrooms and read about Space-X. They already made a trip to the ISS under contract from NASA and they are in the process of developing heavy lift rockets of the future along with Boeing.

No one wants to go to the moon in near term. PLus Orion is not on the shelf. It is still slated for on going testing and use by the middle of the decade. not dead. 

China has decades of catching up to do.

They gave up the moon because bringing people back is too expensive. So they decided to concentrate on one way probes. No matter how advance your Mars rovers are they will never bring a thing back. If they were really thinking of colonizing Mars they would be practicing and training for that on the moon, but they are not. They lost any hope of colonizing Mars much earlier than they gave up the moon.

The rover does not have to return to earth to be successful or to bring back results. This is not the 1960's where the Chinese are still left behind. The rover is a fully functional laboratory, capable of analyzing soil, rock and atmospheric samples and transmitting the results back to NASA scientists. It's equipped with a laser gun to break rocks, a telescope that can analyze the chemical composition of any samples and of course still and video cameras and a powerful antenna to relay all the data gathered, back to the scientists at mission control. The Chinese can't even smell the moon yet, much less Mars. They have yet to do what America accomplished in the 1960's. They are decades behind and falling further back with missions such as this one and the one to the edge of the solar system.

You anti-Chinese sentiments make you blind to their achievements...

What achievements? Come talk to me when they reach the moon, then they'll be up to 1960's standards.

Your anti-American sentiments make you blind to real achievements.

You are pretending that a land rover to Mars is more exiting than sending a man the to moon and bringing him back safely, that the US didn't build a base on the moon just because they didn't want it. What a bulldust!!

 They are different in significant ways and benefits are not comparable. Mars is a vastly friendlier place than the moon and is an Ark in event of catastrophic extinction event in the earth system.

The moon is important as a space port for economical launch and storage for a martian jump. It is a vast fuel source in an energy starved world. 

Knowing about Mars and its habitability is very important. Note we have successfully used ion propulsion so we have conquered one of the problems of long distance flight that is non nuclear.

The problem is and will continue to be to get out of earths gravity well. We are still to produce economical tech for the process and presently the US is far ahead of any on the matter.

Quote by: Stormborn

Mars is a vastly friendlier place than the moon?

Why did you say that Stormy? In every scientific study, Mars is far more dangerous to sustain any life form as we know it. The Curiosity Rover is there to study all the elements of past life if there is any evidence whatsoever. We have had successful manned mission to the moon and back. By this account, we have plenty of vital information about the moon. Did you visit Mars before to feed us with that friendly facts?

  Mars is indeed hostile compared to any place here. It is less hostile than the moon which is an airless  satellite with hardly any gravity and very extreme temperature differences. To live on the moon one has to hide in a deep crater.

Mars has a climate, substantial gravity, lots of subsurface water some UV shielding. Were we to be able to get enough resources there to build protective habitat we will have a chance to survive extended periods without the attendant space ailments as loss of bone mass etc. Its disadvantage is its distance from earth in months vs a week on the moon.

Your last sentence speaks to your ignorance. These are readily available facts even the average moron should have already grasped given the differences in the astronomical bodies.