Living in an isolated neighbourhood can be a bit eerie, even if it’s a posh real estate area in the Milky Way, with life-supporting Supermarkets, clearing goodies every season, for free.
Despite all these freebies, the curious child continues to wipe the fogged windowpane and peer closely into our remote backyards for the fantastic and extraordinary. Hoping, someday fine-pedigreed impish men, with antennae on their heads, would beam us to uncorrupted time wrapped worlds.
Science fictionists, on the other hand, have left no meteorite unturned to fuel, ignite and propel the mind into the mysterious navel of the Universe.
One of the answers to this collective fantasy is Curiosity, a rover or rather a SUV, at this moment happily clicking pictures, digging holes and “eating dirt and rock” far away on an alien planet.
It is not just National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA’s$2.5 billion rover, Curiosity, landing this year on Mars, August 6; it is the curiosity of several billion earthlings, searching for the unknown.
Curiosity was conceived way back in 2004. Her metamorphism from a “reasoned engineering” to the present shape took another four years andNASA’s social media team announced the good news to the world through Twitter on November 19, 2008 - handle @MarsCuriosity.
"I'm WAY cool, nearly built, and I need a name," the baby rover first tweeted and an essay contest was launched for kids. 12-year-old Clara Ma’ suggestion - Curiosity - was chosen from more than 9,000 entries in the US.
After the official baptism, Curiosity cradled on Atlas V launch vehicle and bid goodbye from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011. Curiosity’s lonely, yet extraordinary voyage across billion of stars and planetary objects took no less than eight months, covering a whooping 350 million-mile to reach its new home.
The final seven minutes of her descent, which included entry, descent and landing on the Red planet’s atmosphere was dubbed by NASA as “seven minutes of terror” for the sheer risk involved.
The seven minutes of terror included lowering Curiosity gently through three stages by reducing speed from a staggering 21,000kph (13,000mph) to zero, in what is being billed as “Hollywood style.”
First, a heat shield slowed down the launch vehicle, while protecting it from the extraordinary heat of 1600 degrees generated by the speed. It was further slowed by opening one of the largest and strongest supersonic parachutes built by NASA.
Finally, a sky crane or a robot fell off the descent vehicle and lowered the rover dangling on cables. After the touchdown, the cables were cut off with explosives and the descent vehicle flew off and crash landed at a site elsewhere.
So far is Mars away from Earth that it took 14 minutes for a beep from Curiosity to reach earth. She tweeted:“I arrived at the Red Planet, Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug.6 UTC).” Curiosity currently has over 12,09,048 followers on Twitter and still counting.
But, Oops! There is lot more than just dancing and singing about the baby rover. So what exactly is Curiosity looking for? The Mars rover is expected to spend two years and would try unfolding Mars’ interesting origami and learn about its atmosphere, geology and others, like: Is the atmosphere conducive enough for breaking down the barriers of earth and having that extra backyard for living in future. Is there any biosignatures?
Are there minerals that could be of help back at home – this point is not explicitly mandated in the mission document, but surely its there in the multi-wired robotic mind. And overall, evaluate if a manned flight could be sent to the planet in the near future.
These objectives would be carried out by scooping sand and rocks from the Red planet by Curiosity with its 7 feet robotic arms onto its brains (onboard lab fitted with computers). The laboratory would then send the data to the scientists cozying millions of miles away on Earth at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) inPasadena, California.
Ever since Curiosity landed on mars, JPL has been keeping millions of curious Earthlings updated with new findings, pictures and news of the rover’s adventure, through its excellent star trekking websitehttp://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. The site has a host of learning tools through interactive games, quizzes etc. about our immediate neighbourhood, apart from day-today information about the mission. A visit to the site is a must, especially for students and those interested in knowing the unknown.
“Any scientific quest is good for the people, provide we put the end results in good use,” Dr. S Sudhakar, director of the North East Space Application Centre (NESAC), based at Umiam (Barapani), India, said.
But there has always been this question whether sending expensive robots to space is worth enough when there is a lot to be known about Earth.
To this, there are some divergent views, some interesting ones, however, are floating on the virtual world like: “If Americans are dumb enough to spend $4.5 trillion on a fake war (Iraq) and take on a second war (Afghanistan) that will never end, (then) yes -- It's worth spending a couple $ billion to find at least one intelligent life form in our universe.” 
So far, over 40 missions have been sent by different countries to Mars from the early 60s. The US leads in this race by successfully launching 14 missions. Some of these were flyby missions to get data about the planet’s atmosphere and other physical characteristic; others were more complex, landing on the planet and sending soil sample data, traces of the chemical and geological makeup and snapshots.
In July 4, 1997, Mars Pathfinder landed a base station. It was named Carl Sagan memorial Station in honour of the scientists. The mission successfully landed the first rover – a 10.6 kilograms rover named Sojourner – on the Red planet. There were other very successful mission sent to Mars like the Spirit and Opportunity.
In 2008, the Phoenix Mars Lander sent back photos of ice chunks it found after scooping up handfuls of soil, a huge discovery in the search for water on the planet. Another key ingredient for life, methane, was discovered in the Martian atmosphere.
All this missions does come with a huge price tag. The Viking missions alone cost about a $1 billion back in the 70s. The Spirit and Opportunity missions cost another billion, for building and operation.
Dr. Sudhakar says that the present mission is not likely to yield result in the near future, but has no doubt in saying that the mission would certainly benefit mankind in the long run. India too has jumped into this “Mars mission scientific quest.” After its moon mission – Chandrayaan – India has decided to blast a 450-crore Mars orbiter next year.
Not to be left behind, there are also bounty hunters banking on this scientific quest and general curiosity of people. “Lunar real estate agencies” are selling chunks of the Moon’s surface to buyers. In fact, Shah Rukh Khan reportedly owns a substantial chunk of the satellite, gifted each year by one of his fans. The lunar chunk comes in the way of a certificate sold by a “lunar moon estate agency!”
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