[meteorite-list] NASA's Curiosity Rover Caught in the Act of Landing

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 12:53:37 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201208061953.q76Jrb79026036_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-232

NASA's Curiosity Rover Caught in the Act of Landing
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 06, 2012

PASADENA, Calif. - 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 .

Guy Webster / DC Agle 8180-354-6278 / 818-393-9011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov / agle at jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
Dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov

2012-232
Received on Mon 06 Aug 2012 03:53:37 PM PDT