Recently launched Curiosity rover turns on first instrument

Talking Points Memo : The Mars rover Curiosity, which launched 26 November aboard NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, has switched on one of its instruments in flight. During Curiosity’s eight-month trip, its radiation assessment detector (RAD) will monitor high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the Sun, distant supernovas, and other sources. The rover also will monitor radiation on the surface of Mars after its August 2012 landing. One of 10 precision instruments on board, “RAD is serving as a proxy for an astronaut inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars,” according to a NASA news release from RAD’s principal investigator Don Hassler, from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “The instrument is deep inside the spacecraft, the way an astronaut would be. Understanding the effects of the spacecraft on the radiation field will be valuable in designing craft for astronauts to travel to Mars.”