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NASA via Reuters
About two hours after landing on Mars and beaming back its first image, NASA's Curiosity rover transmitted a higher-resolution image of its new Martian home, Gale Crater, on August 6, 2012. Mission Control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, received the image, taken by one of the vehicle's lower-fidelity, black-and-white Hazard Avoidance Cameras – or Hazcams.
Alan Boyle, NBC News reports from Pasadena, Calif. — After eight years of planning and eight months of interplanetary travel, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory pulled off a touchdown of Super Bowl proportions, all by itself. It even sent pictures from the goal line.
The spacecraft plunged through Mars' atmosphere, fired up a rocket-powered platform and lowered the car-sized, 1-ton Curiosity rover to its landing spot in 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. Then the platform flew off to its own crash landing, while Curiosity sent out a text message basically saying, "I made it!" Continue reading.
Peter Foley / EPA
Spectators in New York's Times Square react as they watch the announcement of the Mars science rover Curiosity's successfully landing on the planet Mars, in New York on August 6, 2012.
More about Mars:
- Scientists want to look for Martian life
- Last-minute guide to the Mars landing
- What will we see from Mars, and when will we see it?
- Why we're obsessed with Mars
- Mars probe provides radiation revelations
Brian Van Der Brug / Pool via AP
Brian Schratz hugs a colleague as he celebrates a successful landing inside the Spaceflight Operations Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif..
Brian Van Der Brug / AP
Activity lead Bobak Ferdowsi, center, wipes tears away inside the Spaceflight Operations Facility after the successful landing.
NASA
Earlier, low-resolution images from the Curiosity rover.
Click through pictures of auroral displays, interplanetary views and other space highlights from July 2012.
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Leave a Comment:
AWESOME! Here's hoping that the government stops wasting money on welfare bums that sit on their butts watching TV all day, and invest it on NASA programs like these that employ many hard-working Americans.
sitting on thier a$$es seems to be a national past time, just as chiropractors, and pain med ingestion for sore, inactive backs. Few adults actually exercise because space-aged gadgets have mede them laaaaaaazy. THat space-aged foam that was invented is in just about EVERY high-end recliner sold in America. a RECLINER, dude.
Good work!
this is done by all sectors of society. Not just the ones you claim get handouts, slick.
for $10Billion and 10 years of work you'd think the photo would be in COLOR
There is a higher resolution color camera as well, but their first priority was a quick look around, and the data rate from the low res B&W cam is much less making for faster transmission of images. We will be getting color pictures later on.
well done to all... congratulation to everyone participated in the mission