Cruise Stage
During the cruise stage, a shell and an array of solar panels will be attached to the rover. The cruise stage is about eight months long and ends when the rover is 45 days away from Mars.
Some major actions done during the cruise stage:
- spacecraft health/maintenance check
- monitoring of Curiosity's instruments
- direction adjustment turns ( spins and other direction adjustments to stay on course for Mars and to adjust to give sunlight to the solar panels )
- preparation for entry, descent, and landing
- activation and monitoring of RAD ( Radiation Assessment Detector )
DSN
The Deep Space Network or DSN is a international network of antennas. The DSN supports all of NASA's space missions and information sharing among NASA astronomers. These massive dishes are up to 70 meters long in diameter and some of them have the capability of sending and receiving transmissions to spacecraft more than 10 billion miles from Earth. The total weight of this enormous antenna is 2970 tons (2.7 million kilograms). The DSN search for signals in space. When a signal is found, the antennas focus the signal to locate the area of the spacecraft. Every NASA spacecraft sent into space has a code. The first signal the antennas receive is a unique code that tells the name and other basic information about the spacecraft. The DSN will be Curiosity's main method of communication.
