The rover Curiosity celebrates its third anniversay since landing on Mars on August 6, 2012.
The rover's primary mission is to find out if Mars is, suitable for life. Other goals include, investigation of the Martian climate and geology; assessment of whether the selected field site inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including investigation of the role of water.
ALTER TECHNOLOGY was responsible for define and perform evaluations and specific characterization of different technologies used in the rover wind & temperature sensor instrument (REMS).
Due to the very extreme environmental conditions of Mars atmosphere (down to -100ºC and large dust density) , the most critical components as photodiodes, thermopiles and a specific analog/digital ASIC of this critical instrument, were submitted to a very extensive qualification campaign to define mission limits and to ensure reliability requirements.
Image: NASA - JPL-Caltech