Curiosity can take pictures, smell, taste and pierce the Martian soil

The browser Curiosity has equipment to take pictures, smell, taste and even a laser to drill the soil of Mars, where he arrived in the early hours of Monday.
 The robot explore the environment to determine if the giant crater where it fell was once a habitable environment for microbial life.

The globetrotting six nuclear-powered wheels and includes a technology far more advanced than any other device that has landed on Mars. Among the tools carrying Curiosity is a laser that can open holes in rocks from a distance of over seven meters and identify the chemical elements inside. This strategy saves time point and shoot, as if a rock is boring, the "tourist" Mars can continue long.

His robot arm 7 meters long is an electric drill on the end that can pierce the surface rocks as well. Like a scientist in a lab, you can transfer the dust of the ground to his desk on board to unravel the minerals and "smell" in search of organic elements, considered the chemical building blocks of life.

 

What is the goal of an extraterrestrial journey if you can not see the tourist attractions? Curiosity promises to be a keen photographer carrying around a set of color cameras that can transmit 2 megapixel panoramic Earth. With YouTube fans in mind, also "packed" a video camera that will record the last minutes of his chilling descent to Mars.

Like the previous exploratory probes that preceded it, Curiosity has a weather station to measure daily temperature, pressure readings and record seasonal changes.

Even before landing, Curiosity has been doing experiments and scoured the radiation during the eight-month journey to Mars and a half. That should help NASA assess the radiation risk for future astronauts traveling long distances.

Despite being so complex, Curiosity will not be able to tell us if life ever existed on Mars early, or if there now. The one-ton vehicle is not equipped for it and their cameras are not powerful enough to see the relics fossils, if any.

Apart from their skills, engineers also equipped them with a sense of style. It has aluminum parts of 50 cm, twice the size of the wheels of rovers Spirit and Opportunity that landed in 2004 with titanium spokes and pull nails. However, it can be very equipped, but a bit slow: a top speed of 0.16 mph.