[troutman]

Curiosity's first year on Mars: Where's the science?


http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily...s-science.html

Most of the social conversation is positive, but there's a consistent undercurrent that's not so positive: what has Curiosity accomplished, really? She's been on Mars for a year, driven a kilometer and a half, drilled two holes. What does the mission have to show for all this time and all the effort and all the money that it took to get Curiosity there? Where's the science? I hear this from a few members of the public, but I've been hearing it a lot from other scientists.

I'll be defending Curiosity below, but I'll begin by agreeing that there's not much science to show yet -- at least not compared to what we are going to get. In the last few days, I've seen several mission scientists and engineers respond to questions like: what has Curiosity's biggest accomplishment been so far? And pretty much everybody has answered that the mission's greatest scientific accomplishment to date is that it has shown Mars was habitable -- that there was a time when there was an environment with liquid water at a friendly pH that persisted for at least a little while. The habitable environment is the one that created the flat-lying, fine-grained rocks visible at Yellowknife Bay.

There are three reasons we haven't started yet. There's one that you can justifiably be annoyed about. But the other two explain why you're going to have to wait for the science, and also why the wait will be so, so worth it.

Reason #1: They weren't ready to do all the science (or driving) when Curiosity landed.

Reason #2: Curiosity is not where the science is going to happen -- yet.

Reason #3: Curiosity is not a flyby mission.

So, for all the scientists who are looking over the Curiosity team's shoulders, asking "are we there yet?" The answer is "no" and maybe also "sit down and be quiet." We have a long, long way to go. It's going to be a grueling road trip, with not a lot of scientific reward along the way.