The Curiosity rover has been on the Red Planet since it landed there in August 2012 and started drilling into the surface in October 2016 to study the planet's mineral chemistry. NASA astronauts will show spectacular footage on your channel, as well as in popular social networks.
The mini testing labs built into the core of NASA's Curiosity rover are back up and running, testing rock samples collected by its newly functional drill. NASA has also added that "the results are embargoed by the journal Science until then", which confirmes the rumors that NASA doesn't want to reveal anything before Thursday.
During the announcement, you'll hear from two scientists who work at at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, along with two researchers from its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
The engineers managed to develop a new drilling method in which the Rover uses as the stop is only a manipulator, clamping the drill to the ground.
If all goes according to plan, the twin communications-relay Mars Cube One (MarCO) spacecraft will allow NASA to quickly transmit status information about InSight as it lands on Mars on November 26, 2018.
But we'll have to wait until Thursday to find out for sure when a live discussion on "new Mars science results" will be streamed on the Nasa website.
However, the rover had to pass one more hurdle and move the rock powder from its drill into its internal lab.
So far, results have been promising and mission control has even ordered Curiosity to return to old sites that it visited while the drill was unserviceable.
What could've Mars rover Curiosity found that it is so intriguing?
Late last month, the rover used it's newly function drill to collect rock samples for the first time in almost two years. "It represents months and months of work by our team to pull this off", said in a statement Jim Erickson, project manager of the Mars Science Laboratory mission. "The gambit paid off, and we now have a key sample we might have never gotten".
After landing in the Gale Crater and exploring the area during the course of its two-year prime mission, it has been climbing and exploring the base of Mount Sharp since September 2014.
08 June 2018
08 June 2018
