Goals and Objectives
The MSL mission has four scientific goals: Determine the landing site's habitability including the role of water, the study of the climate and the geology of Mars. It is also useful preparation for a future manned mission to Mars.
To contribute to these goals, MSL has eight main scientific objectives:
- Biological
- (1) Determine the nature and inventory of organic carbon compounds
- (2) Investigate the chemical building blocks of life (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur)
- (3) Identify features that may represent the effects of biological processes (biosignatures)
- Geological and geochemical
- (4) Investigate the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials
- (5) Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils
- Planetary process
- (6) Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes
- (7) Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide
- Surface radiation
- (8) Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including galactic radiation, cosmic radiation, solar proton events and secondary neutrons
As part of its exploration, it also measured the radiation exposure in the interior of the spacecraft as it traveled to Mars, and it is continuing radiation measurements as it explores the surface of Mars. This data would be important for a future manned mission.
Read more about this topic: Mars Science Laboratory
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—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)