A 1909 Lincoln Cent will be touching down on the surface of Mars with the 2012 "Curiosity" NASA rover -- scheduled to land at 1:17 AM EDT Monday Aug 6th (10:17 PM Sunday PDT August 5th).
The 1909 Lincoln Cent is aboard as a calibration target for the Mars Hand Lens Imager instrument. If this coin could be recovered sometime in the future and then certified by PCGS.... what a prize!
No more bouncing cushion ball landings as in the past. This rover will be landing like Buck Rogers by an eight-engine jetpack "sky crane" that will gently lower it to the surface.
There is an image of a 1909 Lincoln Cent on page 6A of this Friday's USA Today. It has "NASA" printed below it, so I am assuming it is an image of the actual coin on-board.
It has some red high-lights and looks AU-58... but it is hard to tell the grade from this small image. Could be a VDB or Doubled Die, however.
Did they happen to mention why 1909? Seems there has to be some significance here. Cant imagine that was one that was just laying around for them to grab during assembly
Looks like it is a 1909 VDB after all. Here are two links that give more infomation about the coin. The coin looks to have been cleaned.... but if you are the frist and only coin to go to Mars - what the heck!!
For those who do not want to read the whole article here is why for the 1909 which makes a lot more sense now.
Quote: "Originally the Curiosity rover was going to launch in 2009, and so I had planned all along to use a 1909 cent in celebration of the centennial of the Lincoln Cent," he said. "I could not use one of the four 2009 cents because we had to commit to the design and materials (i.e., the 1909 is brass, 2009 is mostly zinc) in 2008. When the launch was delayed to 2011, we still went forward with the 1909 cent because we already had it in-hand.
"In fact, we made 4 of these calibration targets, each with a 1909-VDB. One target is on its way to Mars, two others were used in testing at JPL, the other is in storage as a flight spare that could be used on a future mission to Mars, if such an opportunity were to materialize.
Curiosity rover is closing in on the Red Planet for a white-knuckle descent to the surface using an untried "sky crane" technique to ensure a pinpoint landing on the floor of Gale Crater.
I'm hoping all systems go for a safe landing. A penny heads-up is good luck.
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Posted 08/04/2012 11:49 pm
