Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov
Guy Webster / D.C. Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif.
818-354-6278 / 818-393-9011
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov /
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
PASADENA, Calif. -- Late Monday night,
an image from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera
aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the Curiosity rover and the
components that helped it survive its seven-minute ordeal from space to its
present location in Mars' Gale Crater.
"This latest image is another
demonstration of the invaluable assistance the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team
and its sister team with the Mars Odyssey orbiter have provided the Curiosity
rover during our early days on the Red Planet," said Mike Watkins, mission
manager for the Mars Science Laboratory mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "The image not only satisfies our
curiosity, it can provide important information on how these vital components
performed during entry, descent and landing, and exactly locate the rover's
touchdown site within Gale Crater."
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's (MRO)
image of Curiosity and its parachute, back shell, heat shield and descent stage
can be found at http://go.nasa.gov/OXjKz6.
The Curiosity rover is in the center of
the image. To the right, approximately 4,900 feet away, lies the heat shield,
which protected the rover from 3,800-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures encountered
during its fiery descent. On the lower left, about 2,020 feet away, are the
parachute and back shell. The parachute has a constructed diameter of 71 feet
and an inflated diameter of 51 feet. The back shell remains connected to the
chute via 80, 165-foot-long suspension lines. To the upper-left, approximately
2,100 feet away from the rover, is a discoloration of the Mars surface
consistent with what would have resulted when the rocket-powered Sky Crane
impacted the surface.
"This is the first of what I
imagine will be many portraits HiRISE will be taking of Curiosity on the
surface of Mars," said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at
JPL. "The image was taken Monday at about 10:30 p.m. Pacific when MRO was
at an altitude of about 186 miles and we are getting resolution on the surface
down to 1.3 feet per pixel."
As more of Curiosity's instruments are
coming online, more "first images" are being downlinked from the
rover's 17 cameras. The latest to come in is from the Mars Hand Lens Imager or
MAHLI. The focusable color camera is located on the tool-bearing turret at the
end of Curiosity's robotic arm. Researchers will use it for magnified, close-up
views of rocks and soils and also for wider scenes of the ground, the landscape
or even the rover.
"It is great to have our first
MAHLI image under our belt," said Ken Edgett, principal investigator for
MAHLI from Malin Space Science in San Diego. "We tested the focus
mechanism and imager and the whole system is looking good. We are looking
forward to getting up close and personal with Mars."
The first MAHLI image, taken with the
dust-coated clear plastic cover over the lens, is available at http://go.nasa.gov/Qb3l6U.
The team plans for Curiosity checkout
Tuesday include raising the rover's mast and continued testing of the high-gain
antenna.
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, such as a laser-firing instrument
for checking rocks' elemental composition from a distance, are the first of
their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop which is located at
the end of its robotic arm to gather soil and powdered samples of rock
interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover's analytical
laboratory instruments.
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 of layers
of the crater's interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay
and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.
HiRISE is operated by the University of
Arizona in Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace &
Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars
Exploration Rover projects are managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver, built the orbiter.
For more information on NASA's Curiosity
mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.
For more about the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter, visit http://www.nasa.gov/mro.
Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter
at http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.
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