Curiosity: An international mission to Mars

Curiosity is a mission which consists of shooting a robot to Mars to analise its composition. It was shot in 2011, and since then it has been collecting usefull data which has been analised thorughout the whole world.

The NASA in USA coordinated the missions and built the whole robot, which each part made in different countries whose data is analised in their country.

For example, Spain provided the part to analise the atmosphere and climatic behaviour of the planet. This is held in spanish laboratories and it is paid by the government.

Here there is a video of some of the shots the robot's camera has taken:

The main objective of this mission is to determine whether life was present or not thousands of years ago and if it could be an inhabitable planet. It is a previous step to a future human tripulated mission to Mars.

Spanish Technology Used by the International Space Station

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is the first complex scientific instrument made with spanish participation that travels to the International Space travel to accomplish a research space project. Spain has financed the project with over 11,4 million euros, approximately 4% of the total cost of the instrument's materials.

Other 16 countries have also participated in the project, headed by the USA.

Sources: http://www.agenciasinc.es/Noticias/Un-experimento-con-tecnologia-espanola-viajara-a-la-Estacion-Espacial-Internacional-a-bordo-del-Endeavour 

Graphs that show the responses of spanish people in the street on space travel questions

Spanish Space Tourism

In 2011 Spain headed space tourism just under USA. 12 spanish people paid over 137000 euros for a 2 hour spaceflight.

In 2012, the british engineer James Murray started an international consortium called Booster, whose objective was to make Spain the european headquarters from which the flights from this company will take off.

Spanish Space Trips

First spanish astronaut to go to space: Pedro Duque. 

He is a spanish astronaut and veteran of 2 space missions. He earned a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Politecnical University of Madrid in 1986. He worked for the European space agency and in 2003 he visited the International Space Station.

He has received many awards, both spanish and international.

 

Graph showing the spanish perspective among several questions about space travel. 

Epitome of American Space Travel

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." ~ Astronaut Neil Armstrong 

(July 20, 1969) 

...as he stepped on the moon