Curiosity is the name of the Martian scientific laboratory started from Earth on November 26, 2011 in crayfish of the program of NASA for a research of "The red planet". In the first half of August, 2012 the mars rover successfully landed and began the travel, sending collected information to Earth.
For communication with control center the American mars rover has several channels. At a flight stage between planets the transceiver installed not on the mobile device, and on the platform to which it fastened was involved. During flight to Mars via this transmitter with two antennas in the parachute module except teams of management and status reports on onboard systems also the data on space radiation collected by the device went. In process of removal from Earth the delay in receipt of a signal gradually increased - it had to overcome the increasing distance. In 254 days of flight when the device reached Mars, this distance exceeded 55 million kilometers, and the delay made 13 minutes and 46 seconds.
When landing to the planet the mars rover separated from the platform with its transmitter and own Curiosity communication systems went into action. One of them, as well as the platform transmitter, works in the range of centimetric waves and is capable to transmit signals directly to Earth. However the main is another, working in the decimeter range system intended for contact with satellites which rotate around the red planet. In their this mission it is involved three - two American and one more, belonging to the European Union. Satellites are used for relaying of the data transferred by the mars rover in control center as they bigger time is considerable are in direct visibility from Earth. Therefore Curiosity it is not necessary to wait for an opportunity, keeping data in limited on computer memory size. Information transfer speed from the mars rover is only 19-31 megabytes a day and is regulated automatically depending on external conditions and resources of the device which influence signal force. NASA expects to obtain information from the Martian laboratory till July, 2014.