page_title: Mars Science Laboratory
section_title: Goals and objectives
hierarchical_section_title: Mars Science Laboratory / Goals and objectives
caption_attribution_description: English: On Sol 84 (Oct. 31, 2012), NASA's Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture this set of 55 high-resolution images, which were stitched together to create this full-color self-portrait. The mosaic shows the rover at "Rocknest," the spot in Gale Crater where the mission's first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover. The base of Gale Crater's 3-mile-high (5-kilometer) sedimentary mountain, Mount Sharp, rises on the right side of the frame. Mountains in the background to the left are the northern wall of Gale Crater. The Martian landscape appears inverted within the round, reflective ChemCam instrument at the top of the rover's mast. Self-portraits like this one document the state of the rover and allow mission engineers to track changes over time, such as dust accumulation and wheel wear. Due to its location on the end of the robotic arm, only MAHLI (among the rover's 17 cameras) is able to image some parts of the craft, including the port-side wheels. This high-resolution mosaic is a more detailed version of the low-resolution version created with thumbnail images, at PIA16238. JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. This file is modified in contrast, white balance, perspective distortion and some minor other settings compared to the official version released by NASA. Versions as released by NASA can be found below.
context_page_description: Mars Science Laboratory is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, which successfully landed Curiosity, a Mars rover, in Gale Crater on August 6, 2012. The overall objectives include investigating Mars' habitability, studying its climate and geology, and collecting data for a human mission to Mars. The rover carries a variety of scientific instruments designed by an international team.
context_section_description: The MSL mission has four scientific goals: Determine the landing site's habitability including the role of water, the study of the climate and the geology of Mars. It is also useful preparation for a future human mission to Mars.
  To contribute to these goals, MSL has eight main scientific objectives:
  Biological
  (1) Determine the nature and inventory of organic carbon compounds
  (2) Investigate the chemical building blocks of life (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur)
  (3) Identify features that may represent the effects of biological processes (biosignatures)
  Geological and geochemical
  (4) Investigate the chemical, isotopic, and mineralogical composition of the Martian surface and near-surface geological materials
  (5) Interpret the processes that have formed and modified rocks and soils
  Planetary process
  (6) Assess long-timescale (i.e., 4-billion-year) Martian atmospheric evolution processes
  (7) Determine present state, distribution, and cycling of water and carbon dioxide
  Surface radiation
  (8) Characterize the broad spectrum of surface radiation, including cosmic radiation, solar particle events and secondary neutrons. As part of its exploration, it also measured the radiation exposure in the interior of the spacecraft as it traveled to Mars, and it is continuing radiation measurements as it explores the surface of Mars. This data would be important for a future human mission.
  About one year into the surface mission, and having assessed that ancient Mars could have been hospitable to microbial life, the MSL mission objectives evolved to developing predictive models for the preservation process of organic compounds and biomolecules; a branch of paleontology called taphonomy.
caption: MSL self-portrait from Gale Crater sol 85 (October 31, 2012).
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