Discovery Channel Documentaries
Mars Landing 2012: The New Search for Life
TV-G
2012 • E10 Aug 7, 2012 45mPresented by Daily Planet co-hosts Ziya Tong and Dan Riskin, the Red Planet simply won't know what hit it. Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), more lovingly known as Curiosity, weighs a metric ton. That's 900 kilos of genius packed into a machine as wide as a Hummer. She's the Einstein of robots, and she has one painstaking question to answer: is there, or has there ever been life on Mars ?
From her custom-built heat shield designed to withstand intense 1,600 C degree heat and speeds up to 21,735 km/hr, to her state-of-the-art supersonic parachute that will endure 29,484 kilos of force - Curiosity is set to break all records. For the first time ever, a rover will be able to supply NASA - and the rest of the world - with stunning HD images from 17 different cameras. She will be able to zap rocks with a laser that's as powerful as a million light bulbs focused on the head of a pin. She will drive for hundreds of kilometers and use her
massive robotic arm to drill into Gale Crater; a multilayered cake of Martian history.
From her custom-built heat shield designed to withstand intense 1,600 C degree heat and speeds up to 21,735 km/hr, to her state-of-the-art supersonic parachute that will endure 29,484 kilos of force - Curiosity is set to break all records. For the first time ever, a rover will be able to supply NASA - and the rest of the world - with stunning HD images from 17 different cameras. She will be able to zap rocks with a laser that's as powerful as a million light bulbs focused on the head of a pin. She will drive for hundreds of kilometers and use her
massive robotic arm to drill into Gale Crater; a multilayered cake of Martian history.