“This is the kind of thing that inspires kids across the country,” Obama said when he called the mission control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, yesterday.
“They’re telling their moms and dads they want to be part of a Mars mission, maybe even the first person to walk on Mars.”
Obama, who also told the team, “you made us all proud”, congratulated JPL director Charles Elachi and the Mars Science Laboratory team operating the rover, which landed on the red planet last week.
“What you’ve accomplished embodies the American spirit,” said Obama.
“Our expectation is that Curiosity is going to be telling us things we did not know before and laying the groundwork for an even more audacious undertaking in the future, and that’s a human mission to Mars.”
Elachi thanked Obama for the call and added, “Hopefully we inspire some of the millions of young people who were watching the landing.”
Obama said, “You guys should be remarkably proud. Really what makes us best as a species is this curiosity we have – this yearning to discover and know more and push the boundaries of knowledge.”
Curiosity‘s work on Mars
The rover team has completed three of the four days of activities needed for transitioning Curiosity‘s two main computers from landing software to a version of software suited for the rover’s work on the surface of Mars.
The surface work will include driving and using a drill and scoop on the end of Curiosity‘s robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieving and parceling out these samples into the rover’s analytical laboratory instruments, NASA said.
But first, there will be a few weeks of initial checkouts and observations to assess equipment on Curiosity and characteristics of the landing site, to begin in about a week, said Curiosity mission manager Art Thompson.
Mount Sharp on Mars’ horizon. This is a portion of the first colour 360-degree panorama from NASA’s Curiosity rover, made up of thumbnails, which are small copies of higher-resolution images. Image by NASA
Article source: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/28769-us-president-barack-obama-p
WHAT IS AN SSL CERTIFICATE?
