NASA explores 'Curiosity' for nuclear-powered Mars rover
A 12-year-old girl from Kansas has chosen the name of NASA's nuclear-powered Mars Science Laboratory rover. Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech Clara Ma, an elementary student from Lenexa, Kansas, submitted the winning entry, "Curiosity" for the space agency's nationwide essay contest for youths to name the rover. Her suggestion …
So we've been killing Martians the entire time we've been looking for them?
Just wait until we start sending robots to other planets. I'm sure some of them (like Saturn) will have more easily provoked life-forms than Mars.
OMG, pink pony!
That passage from her essay doesn't sound like it came from a 12yo. I suspect some over-the shoulder input from an overzealous mom and pop.
So this thing is going to look for water and signs of life? Like the last three or four? Didn't they find water already? Pretty friggin amazing that it has taken them this long to figure out the perchorate problem. This time they'll probably figure out that the nukes interfere with the radiation sensors.
We can only hope that given the 'success' of Viking and Phoenix at that Curiosity doesn't venture too close to a Martian pet hotel....
Didn't it also kill the cat? We've already killed a Beagle.
My "12yo" daughter is perfectly capable of writing that kind of prose.
Just because your child isn't capable of writing it is no reason to belittle the efforts of others.
Really? I would have said that the somewhat corny phrasing is EXACTLY what I would expect from a bright 12-year-old girl. As for pink ponies – across the entire country, there are bound to be SOME girls who aren’t obsessed with horses. Just entering the competition implies a much-greater-than-average interest in science.
As for the perchlorate thing, it seems par for the course for NASA probes. Didn’t someone theorise last year that the Viking landers probably fried the local wildlife with their landing rockets before they even GOT to the sampling stage.
If we've been exterminating the natives since 1975.
So this nuclear-powered Mars rover, I'm Curious is it Stirling or thermocouple? anyone know??
We send our names to Mars so that when the next Tunguska meteorite wipes us all out, leaving nothing but cockroaches and New Labour apparatchiks (but I repeat myself), there will be some trace of intelligent life left in our solar system.
Have a nice day! :D
made me lol ignore the other do righters above :D
lol@AC 06:18 GMT
seriously though you have made your point if its really the parent, loved reading your post keep it up.
Oh no. Its not curiosity that wakes me up every frickin' morning. Its the cat.
So that's why aliens in movies zap everything with rayguns. They're just trying to 'analyze [our] materials in gas form'
And here we though the Martians were going to come here and kill US with heat rays. Oh the irony of it all.
