This is awesome! The full-resolution images taken by Curiosity’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) instrument have been downloaded and assembled by Luke Fitch into a high-definition video of the rover’s descent and landing on Mars. From the heat shield falling away to the final, dust-blown touchdown in Gale Crater via sky crane, we finally get a…
Category: Mars
Curiosity’s Message to Mars
While Curiosity is definitely loaded up with some of the most high-tech instruments ever made to investigate the surface of Mars, it also carries one very low-tech instrument: a sundial, which can be used to determine the position of the Sun in the sky and the season on Mars — just like they do here…
A Lomographic Look at Mount Sharp
Looking like an old photograph of a Western U.S. landscape, this is a view from Curiosity’s acquired on August 18 (UTC) with the rover’s right Navcam. I colored the image using some of Curiosity’s previous color shots for reference, and adjusted the curves quite a bit from the original to bring out some contrast. The…
An MSL Panorama from Gale Crater
Here’s a panoramic view of the mountainous rim of Gale Crater, as seen by Curiosity’s left Mastcam on 8/9/2012. The image is assembled from 5 raw subsampled images. Gale Crater is about 96 miles (154 km) wide and estimated to be around 3.8 billion years old. Want to see more of this view? Click here,…
Flying Saucers Over Mars!
It might not be a UFO per se but it’s definitely a flying disk from another planet — except in this case the other planet is Earth! This image, a high-resolution version of one sent back by Curiosity’s Mars Descent Imager on the morning of August 6, shows MSL’s heat shield falling away, allowing the…
Heads Up, Curiosity!
This just in: the latest full-size image from Curiosity shows the rover’s shadow with its “head” extended…. hello, Curiosity! 🙂 The image above was taken with the rover’s left navcam, and also shows its branded plate and cool little Atari-esque “logo”. Awesome! You can see more raw images from Curiosity on the JPL site here….
New Mars Rover is a Litterbug!
Only two days on Mars and Curiosity has already made a mess! 🙂 The various components from MSL’s descent and landing process have been spotted by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, scattered in the vicinity of Curiosity within Gale crater. MSL’s heat shield, parachute, back shell and sky crane (with a very…
Landing on Mars – From a Rover’s Point of View
Ride along with Curiosity as it descends to the surface of Mars in this 4 fps video taken by the rover’s Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) camera! These images are low-resolution, the full-res versions will be available at a later date. But still the view during the rover’s harrowing descent, showing the heat shield falling away…
Curiosity Lands on Mars and Returns First Images
The Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity successfully landed on Mars on August 5 (PDT), to the thrill of millions around the world who watched in tense amazement as the harrowing landing sequence played out step-by-step exactly as designed, showing that we can safely place a 2-ton nuclear-powered vehicle on the surface of another planet and…
How Curiosity Will Meet Mars
At 10:31 p.m. PDT tonight, August 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 6), after nearly 9 months of travel, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (and a rover named Curiosity) will arrive at the Red Planet to explore the interior of Gale Crater and hunt for the ingredients of life. Of course, between arriving and hunting, there has…
Is This What Life on Mars Might Have Looked Like?
A great find from the NASA archives! This composite of three artists’ renderings from 1975 may have only been wish fulfillment for an unnamed JPL artist; however, the landscape and the rendered shapes took into account what was known about Mars at that time, a year before the first Viking landing. “Life on Mars” was…
Remembering Sojourner, the First Mars Rover
The Mars Pathfinder mission, launched on Dec. 4, 1996, was designed to demonstrate a low-cost method for delivering a set of science instruments to Mars and sent the first wheeled vehicle to be used on another planet. The mission served as the foundation for all future Mars rovers. Although I eagerly followed the exciting news…
Lights in the Dark 