NASA’S CURIOSITY ROVER CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF LANDING

An image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE)

camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance orbiter captured the Curiosity rover still connected to

its 51-foot-wide (almost 16 meter) parachute as it descended towards its landing site at Gale Crater.

“If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at

an empty Martian landscape,” said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at NASA’s Jet

Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “When you consider that we have been working on this

sequence since March and had to upload commands to the spacecraft about 72 hours prior to the

image being taken, you begin to realize how challenging this picture was to obtain.”

The image of Curiosity on its parachute can be found at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia15978b.html

The image was taken while MRO was 211 miles (340 kilometers) away from the parachuting rover.

Curiosity and its rocket-propelled backpack, contained within the conical-shaped back shell, had yet

to be deployed. At the time, Curiosity was about two miles (three kilometers) above the Martian

surface.

“Guess you could consider us the closest thing to paparazzi on Mars,” said Milkovich. “We definitely

caught NASA’s newest celebrity in the act.”

Curiosity, NASA’s latest contribution to the Martian landscape, landed at 10:32 p.m. Aug. 5, PDT,

(1:32 on Aug. 6, EDT) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall inside Gale Crater, 96 miles in

diameter.

In other Curiosity news, one part of the rover team at the JPL continues to analyze the data from last

night’s landing while another continues to prepare the one-ton mobile laboratory for its future

explorations of Gale Crater. One key assignment given to Curiosity for its first full day on Mars is to

raise its high-gain antenna. Using this antenna will increase the data rate at which the rover can

communicate directly with Earth. The mission will use relays to orbiters as the primary method for

sending data home, because that method is much more energy-efficient for the rover.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on

the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a

laser-firing instrument for checking rocks’ elemental composition from a distance. Later in the

mission, the rover will use a drill and scoop at the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered

samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into analytical laboratory

instruments inside the rover.

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or

Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance to layers of the

crater’s interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the

lower layers, indicating a wet history.

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover

was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

For more information on the mission, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/mars and

http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at

http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity

http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity

HiRISE is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball

Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and the

Mars Exploration Rover Project are managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.,

for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of

Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the orbiter.

For more about the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, see http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

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