NASA’s latest Mars mission takes off on Saturday carrying a huge array of high-tech tools. Critical to its success is a cutting-edge water detector built by Russian scientists.
RT's Darya Pushkover has been to meet the people behind the device.
The Red Planet has been a source of wild flights of imagination and of scientific speculation for centuries. Getting there has never been easy – many missions have failed.
But hopes are high for the new rover. It is called “Curiosity” and it is due on Mars next year.
Engineer Aleksey Bitulev told RT that the heart of the device is a tiny tube that produces neutrons capable of penetrating up to one meter below the planet’s surface. And Sergey Sholeninov, head of the design team, added that the challenge was to accommodate the device on board a spacecraft.
“We were not only limited in weight – it also has to endure all the hardships of interplanetary flight.”
DAN’s second half is a hydrogen detector, which will act as the probe’s aqua navigator.
“The rover is like a small car, and our device is placed on it like headlights,” Mitrofanov explained. “So as the pulsing neutron generator shoots, neutrons go under the ground, and feel their way under. If liquid or frozen water is there, it can then be measured with our detector.”
And the Rover comes fully-loaded: 17 high-definition cameras, aluminium wheels that can be steered independently, a mounted laser to vaporize rock and a robotic arm to drill and scoop up samples, among other instruments. Under the hood: a nuclear-powered engine to give it a top crawling speed of five centimeters per second.
Read more at: Russia Today