The Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.
Jennifer Trosper, Mars Science Laboratory, MSL mission manager, JPL, adjusts the high-gain antenna on a rover model during a news briefing on the last data and imagery from Sol 1 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Monday, August 6, 2012. The rover’s primary mission today will be raising its high-gain antenna, which will enable better communication with JPL scientists. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
This image taken by NASA’s Curiosity shows what lies ahead for the rover — its main science target, informally called Mount Sharp Monday, Aug. 6, 2012. The rover’s shadow can be seen in the foreground, and the dark bands beyond are dunes. Rising up in the distance is the highest peak of Mount Sharp at a height of about 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers), taller than Mt. Whitney in California. The Curiosity team hopes to drive the rover to the mountain to investigate its lower layers, which scientists think hold clues to past environmental change. This image was captured by the rover’s front left Hazard-Avoidance camera at full resolution shortly after it landed. It has not yet been linearized to remove the distorted appearance that results from its fisheye lens. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech)
In this frame provided by NASA of a stop motion video taken during the NASA rover Mars landing, the heat shield falls away during Curiosity’s descent to the surface of Mars on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2012. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
This image released on Tuesday Aug. 7,2012 by NASA shows the first color view of the north wall and rim of Gale Crater where NASA’s rover Curiosity landed Sunday night. The picture was taken by the rover’s camera at the end of its stowed robotic arm and appears fuzzy because of dust on the camera’s cover. (AP Photo/NASA)
It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come.
“Spectacular,” mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. “We’ve not had that before.”
Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.
Locale aside, Curiosity is giving scientists an unprecedented sense of what it took to reach its Martian destination. The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that NASA processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.
In the video, the protective heat shield pops off and tumbles away. The footage gets jumpy as Curiosity rides on a parachute. In the last scene, dust billows up just before landing.
NASA twice tried to record a Mars landing. In 1999, the Mars Polar Lander carried similar gear, but it slammed into the south pole after prematurely shutting off its engines. Another effort was aborted in 2008 during the Phoenix lander’s mission to the northern plains when mission managers decided not to turn it on for fear it would interfere with the landing.
“It’s too emotional for me,” said Ken Edgett of the Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the video camera. “It’s been a long journey and it’s really awesome.”
The full high-resolution video will be downloaded when time allows and should give the first peek of a landing on another planet.
Curiosity’s journey to Mars spanned eight months and 352 million miles. The rover gently touched down Sunday night after executing an elaborate and untested landing routine. The size of a compact car, it was too heavy to land using air bags. Instead, it relied on a heat shield, parachute, rockets and cables to lower it to the ground.
During its seven-minute plunge through the atmosphere, Curiosity shed the spacecraft parts. On Tuesday, scientists got their first view of the castoffs. The eagle-eyed Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had circled over the landing site and spotted Curiosity and the scattered parts.
“It’s like a crime scene photo,” said Sarah Milkovich, a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.
The parachute appeared to be inflated, and the rocket stage that unspooled the cables crashed 2,100 feet from the landing site.
Earlier this week, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter caught Curiosity sailing through the Martian skies under a parachute. It was only the second time a spacecraft has been photographed on a parachute; the first was Phoenix during its descent to the surface.
The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity will spend the next two years chiseling into rocks and scooping up soil at Gale Crater to determine whether the environment ever had the right conditions for microbes to thrive. It will spend a chunk of its time driving to Mount Sharp where images from space reveal signs of past water on the lower flanks.
It’ll be several weeks before it takes its first drive and flexes its robotic arm. Since landing, engineers have been busy performing health checkups on its systems and instruments. Over the next several days, it was poised to send back crisper pictures of its surroundings including a panorama.
The rover was “still in great shape,” mission manager Michael Watkins said.
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Follow Alicia Chang’s Mars coverage at: http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
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August 08, 2012 02:56 AM EDT
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Tags: JPL scientists, Mars landing, Mars Science Laboratory, Rover Curiosity, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist, Mount Sharp <BR/>Related posts:
