[meteorite-list] NASA's Curiosity Beams Back a Color 360 of Gale Crater

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2012 14:50:07 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201208092150.q79Lo7fl006440_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-237

NASA's Curiosity Beams Back a Color 360 of Gale Crater
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
August 09, 2012

[Images]
    * Gale Crater Vista, in Glorious Color <#1>
    * NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Image <#2>
    * NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Image <#3>
    * NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Image <#4>

PASADENA, Calif. - The first images from Curiosity's color Mast Camera,
or Mastcam, have been received by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The 130 low-resolution thumbnails, which
were received Thursday morning, provide scientists and engineers of
NASA's newest Mars rover their first color, horizon-to-horizon glimpse
of Gale Crater.

"After a year in cold storage, where it endured the rigors of launch,
the deep space cruise to Mars and everything that went on during
landing, it is great to see our camera is working as planned," said Mike
Malin, principal investigator of the Mastcam instrument from Malin Space
Science Systems in San Diego. "As engaging as this color panorama is, it
is important to note this is only one-eighth the potential resolution of
images from this camera."

The Curiosity team also continued to downlink high-resolution
black-and-white images from its Navigation Camera, or Navcam. These
individual images have been stitched together to provide a
high-resolution Navcam panorama, including a glimpse of the rover's
deck. Evident on some portions of the deck are some small Martian pebbles.

"The latest Navcam images show us that the rocket engines on our descent
stage kicked up some material from the surface of Mars, several pieces
which ended up on our rover's deck," said Mike Watkins, mission manager
for Curiosity from JPL. "These small pebbles we currently see are up to
about 1 centimeter [0.4 inch] in size and should pose no problems for
mission operations. It will be interesting to see how long our
hitchhikers stick around."

Curiosity's color panorama of Gale Crater is online at:
http://1.usa.gov/P7VsUw. Additional images from Curiosity are available
at: http://1.usa.gov/MfiyD0.

Mission engineers devoted part of their third Martian day, or "Sol 3,"
to checking the status of four of Curiosity's science instruments after
their long trip. The rover's Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer,
Chemistry and Mineralogy analyzer, Sample Analysis at Mars, and Dynamic
of Albedo Neutrons instruments were each energized and went through a
preliminary checkout. The team also performed a check on the rover's
second flight computer.

Even before landing, the mission's science team began the process of
creating a geological map of about 150 square miles (about 390 square
kilometers) within Gale Crater that includes the landing area.

"It is important to understand the geological context around Curiosity,"
said Dawn Sumner of the University of California, Davis, a member of the
Curiosity science team. "We want to choose a route to Mount Sharp that
makes good progress toward the destination while allowing important
science observations along the way."

The mapping project divided the area into 151 quadrangles of about one
square mile (about 2.6 square kilometers) each. Curiosity landed in the
quadrangle called Yellowknife. Yellowknife is the city in northern
Canada that was the starting point for many of the great geological
expeditions to map the oldest rocks in North America.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as
large as the science payloads on NASA's 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 are
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.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science
Experiment (HiRISE) camera 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, Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled
at JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the orbiter.

For more about NASA's Curiosity 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 and
http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.

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

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

2012-237
Received on Thu 09 Aug 2012 05:50:07 PM PDT