Analyse Martian Rocks

Can you imagine you’re an astronaut on an important interplanetary mission? Sure you can. Let’s say you’ve already put on your space suit and you’re on the spaceship, at a breakneck speed, heading to a mysterious planet with a task in hand. NASA sends you to Mars to help its best robot collect soil samples. He’s alone and needs your help. To do so, you must discover how Curiosity, which is the name of your new technological partner, works and follow the steps to discover new important information to send back to Earth.

You’re about to reach your destination. If you want to get an idea of what a landing on Mars is like, see how the Curiosity robot arrived in 2012. You can hear the applause and shouts of joy from NASA technicians, happy for the success!

You’re finally on Mars, the Red Planet. You leave the landing module and touch with your feet the reddish floor, raising a small cloud of dust. You look around and marvel at the endless desert expanse surrounding you. Earth and rock are almost everything you can see, which is fantastic, because your task is to study the geology of this wonderful and unknown planet.

To provide these pictures, Curiosity spends a lot of time and uses the cameras on his robotic arm to take dozens of photos that are then grouped into a single panoramic — or even 360º — image. By using this technique, you’ve even been able to photograph yourself! If you want to see the process of doing these curious ‘selfies’, watch the following video:

Now that we’re here and have had some time to admire the Martian landscape, shall we get to work?

The exploration doesn’t end here! If you want to continue walking around the surface of Mars, you can try this 360º virtual-reality game (designed with real images taken by the astromobile robot Curiosity), and learn what its components are and what they’re for: accessmars.withgoogle.com/ or this applicationof Windows microsoft.com/es-es/p/mars-rover-curiosity/9wzdncrdg76w?rtc=1&activetab=pivot:overviewtab.

To stay updated with future missions and the latest images, videos and curiosities about the Red Planet, you can install the Be A Martian app:play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gov.nasa.jpl.beam and other NASA apps dedicated to multiple disciplines:https://www.nasa.gov/connect/apps.html

Did you like these activities? You have many more available, for young and old, in the special ‘Science in your living room’