The “Curiosity”: Another Space Milestone

The American space agency NASA began yesterday to disseminate the stunning images of the arrival and first days on Mars of the “Curiosity,” the unmanned robot launched on November 26, 2011, atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, that touched Martian ground this past Monday after traveling 567 million kilometers.

The act alone of successfully landing an apparatus equipped with the most sophisticated scientific investigative equipment, without suffering any damage, was reason for world celebration. Having overcome this first obstacle — the “seven minutes of terror,” as the directors called the duration of the complex maneuver after entering the Martian atmosphere — what comes next is much more interesting and worthy of astonishment. The fundamental mission of the Curiosity is to find answers to the questions which fascinate not only scientists, but everyone who is curious about matters related to the possibility of current or previous life on Mars, the planet in our solar system closest and most similar to Earth.

The scientific community’s interest in Mars became a reality halfway through the 1960s, with the United States’ Mariner Program. The most celebrated manmade satellite was the Mariner 9, which orbited around the Red Planet and, unlike the poor results of its earlier counterparts, sent rather clear photographs of the whole surface starting November 13, 1971, as well as relevant data on the pressure, density and composition of the Martian atmosphere, temperature, gravity and topography.

The oldest ancestor of the Curiosity was the Venera 3 probe which, as its name indicates, sought to investigate the surface of Venus. It was launched on November 16, 1965, by the Soviet Union, equipped with radio communications equipment, its energy source and various scientific equipment. The mission failed as the impact of the fall destroyed the equipment, but the Soviets learned their lesson; the Venera 4 managed to successfully land the probe using a hot-air balloon.

The so-called “space race,” as became known the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union to lead in the exploration of outer space, was a powerful driving force of human progress. Without a doubt, in the middle of the political and ideological confrontation known as the “Cold War,” we owe the greatest milestones in the history of space research to this technological and scientific emulation. Let’s remember some: The Soviet Sputnik 1, the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth, and Sputnik 2 with its celebrated passenger, the dog Laika. To these the U.S. responded with Score, the first communications satellite and pioneer of the greatest developments in this matter, launched December 18, 1958. Later, in February 1959, came the first meteorological satellite, the Vanguard 2; another resounding U.S. victory that today still continues compiling information on the density of the atmosphere, something that it is expected to keep doing for the rest of its useful life, estimated to be 300 years.

Meanwhile, the Soviets continued their obsession with putting people in space. They achieved this in April of 1961 with the Vostok I and its astronaut Yuri Gagarin, and two years later with the Vostok 6 and the first woman astronaut, Valentina Tereshkova. The U.S. countered with the Apollo missions, the most famous being Apollo 8, which put three astronauts in orbit around Earth on December 24, 1968, and the tremendous Apollo 11 mission, manned by Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins, the first of whom became the first man ever to walk on the face of the moon on July 21, 1969.

For some analysts, the “space race” between the two powers ended in 1975, when they resolved to combine forces on a joint project, the Apollo-Soyuz, which consisted of the space docking of the two ships. The rivalry may have come to an end, that’s true, but not the race to discover the mysteries of outer space. Now, this race is characterized by the great collaboration between the U.S., the European Union and Russia — indispensable, like everything in times of crisis, where progress cannot stop.