NASA Tells The World About Mars With AWS

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is the premier NASA center for the robotic exploration of space. JPL has sent a robot to every planet in the solar system. NASA/JPL is also leading the way in the adoption of cloud computing across the federal government. In fact, cloud computing is an essential part of the tactical operations pipeline for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. From the control room in Pasadena, California, NASA/JPL is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to capture and store images and metadata collected from the Mars Exploration Rover and the Mars Science Laboratory missions. The Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is still roving on Mars after landing 8 years ago, and Mars rover Curiosity landed on August 5, 2012.

On November 26, 2011, NASA launched Curiosity on an 8-month voyage to the Red Planet. This high-profile mission had a number of challenges that needed to be overcome in order to be successful. First, the landing was a huge challenge because Curiosity’s mass rendered previous landing approaches untenable. Engineers at JPL designed an innovative entry/descent/landing technique that concluded with a “sky crane” maneuver that gently lowered Curiosity to the surface. NASA wanted to ensure that this thrilling experience was shared with fans across the globe by providing up-to-the-minute details of the mission - especially during the final 7 minutes it took for the rover to descend through the Martian atmosphere and land on Mars...