Packing a Mars Rover for the Trip to Florida

Check out this way cool time-lapse movie of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover as its being packed up for her trip to Florida.

The video covers a 4 day period from June 13 to 17 and is condensed to just 1 minute. Watch the JPL engineers and technicians prepare Curiosity and the descent stage for shipping to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and place it inside a large protective shipping container.

The rover and descent stage will be delivered to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at KSC is the next stop for Curiosity on its way to Destination Mars. Curiosity will be shipped to Florida in the next few days. The facility is used for NASA landers subject to the most stringent planetary protection requirements.

Curiosity will be delivered to a high tech cleanroom at KSC. After arriving, the rover will undergo a wide ranging series of flight system checks to insure the rover is ready to rove on the red planet and that it survived the shipping across the US. Also, installation of the final few components including the RTG power source will be completed.

The launch window for Curiosity open on November 25. The rover will blast to space atop a powerful Atlas V rocket from Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

Curiosity is larger than Spirit and Opportunity, measuring some three meters long and equipped with a much more powerful array of science instruments. Curiosity will search for environmental conditions that could have been conducive to supporting martian life – in the past or present – if it ever even existed.

15 Replies to “Packing a Mars Rover for the Trip to Florida”

  1. I used to transport cargo accross the country here in Austraila. Had a few accidents with forklifts and such loading and unloading. I would be scared out of my wits if I was transporting this thing.

      1. Chill, dude. I just found it funny that an Australian, of all people, would misspell the name of his country. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing personal against Australians; I think that they have a great sense of humour — which you seem to be lacking in!

      2. Chill, dude. I just found it funny that an Australian, of all people, would misspell the name of his country. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing personal against Australians; I think that they have a great sense of humour — which you seem to be lacking in!

      3. Comments are generally informal writing; however, in formal writing, a dangling preposition is something up with which I will not put! 😉

      4. Who is obsessive, the repetitive person or the person who takes notice?

        [I’m just kidding, it is like other irritants; if you never scratch you aren’t healthy either. Just don’t dig too deep. :-/]

      5. Chill, dude. I just found it funny that an Australian, of all people, would misspell the name of his country. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing personal against Australians; I think that they have a great sense of humour — which you seem to be lacking in!

  2. [IVAN]Should be “it’s” with an apostrophe in the first sentence, and “conditions” in the last.[/IVAN]

  3. I’m assuming they’ve built two of these vehicles (a twin) as they’ve done with previous rovers. They do this for problem-solving purposes, the need to replicate the conditions and situations occurring on the Martian surface.

  4. I’d thing the Vegas odds are against this thing making it. The descent to landing profile is a Rube Goldberg design.

    1. I’ll gladly take your money! To Jose’s point below, there may be a twin. BTW, before IVAN points it out, “thing” should be “think”.

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