University of Tasmania, Australia

Mars is getting intense traffic. On 6 August 2012 the Curiosity rover will land on Mars. It will be the most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to the Red Planet. Professor Paulo de Souza from the University of Tasmania who has instrumentation aboard the twins Spirit and Opportunity, will share some insight details about this mission.

The Curiosity landing is the most difficult NASA mission ever attempted in the history of robotic planetary exploration. Curiosity will be investigating whether Mars has ever offered an environment favourable for microbial life. The rover will check for the basic chemical ingredients for life and for evidence about energy available for life to flourish. It will use tools on a robotic arm to collect samples from Martian rocks and soils into miniaturised laboratory instruments inside the rover that can reveal in great detail the Martian composition.

Professor de Souza will guide you through the history of the Exploration of the Red Planet and introduce you to what you would expect to see in the next decade.

About the speaker

Professor de Souza is an internationally recognised and awarded researcher and research manager in fields of geochemistry and ICT, including field robotics, sensor informatics, sensor networks, pattern recognition, and knowledge discovery, with seventeen years of experience in industrial research; over 200 scientific publications, two patents and two books. He has been for more than a decade a Participating Scientist of the Mars Exploration Rovers Project (JPL/NASA/Cornell).

Visit the NASA website for more information about the NASA mission.