Anyone anxious for more information on the supposed rat found on Mars will have to wait a while because the Curiosity rover is set to travel five miles to explore Mount Sharp, NASA stated in a press release.
In the release posted Wednesday, NASA called the upcoming journey a "turning point" as the rover will leave the post it held for six months. While stationed, Curiosity discovered, based on terrain exploration, that Mars was at one time suitable for human life.
Now, the rover will embark on the mission it was originally intended for.
"We're hitting full stride," Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. said in the release. "We needed a more deliberate pace for all the first-time activities by Curiosity since landing, but we won't have many more of those."
Mount Sharp is believed to hold many answers scientists have about the planet. It stands 3.4 miles above the ground in the Gale Crater, where Curiosity landed.
"It's like looking at the layers of the Grand Canyon," Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for Curiosity told Mashable. "[It preserved] the record of how things were in past and how they have changed."
Scientists could not estimate how long it would take Curiosity to reach Mount Sharp because the rover will travel at a slow pace and will stop to explore if need be.
"This truly is a mission of exploration, so just because our end goal is Mount Sharp doesn't mean we're not going to investigate interesting features along the way" Erickson said.
"Shaler" and "Point Lake" are the two main stops for Curiosity as it heads toward Mount Sharp. Crisp said in the release that the two areas might also hold answers to Martian mysteries.
"Shaler might be a river deposit. Point Lake might be volcanic or sedimentary," Crisp said. "A closer look at them could give us better understanding of how the rocks we sampled with the drill fit into the history of how the environment changed."
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