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NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo
The Mars Curiosity rover's robotic arm takes aim at Mount Sharp in a mosaic that combines navigation-camera imagery from Sols 2, 12 and 14 (Aug. 8, 18 and 20). The shadow of the rover's camera mast is visible in the center foreground, but a significant portion of the mosaic still has to be filled in.
If you want to know where NASA's Curiosity rover is heading, all you have to do is look where its robotic arm is pointing in this picture. The Martian mosaic was pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo, using black-and-white pictures from the rover's navigation camera system.
The robotic arm was raised into what looks like a pointing position as part of this week's checkout for Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission. When fully extended, the arm can stretch out for 7 feet (2.1 meters). About 66 pounds' (30 kilograms') worth of scientific instruments, including a camera and an X-ray spectrometer, are mounted on the end of the arm.
The arm is pointing at a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp — a mound inside Mars' Gale Crater whose layers of rock could reveal a geological record going back billions of years. During its two-year mission, Curiosity is expected to make the 12-mile (20-kilometer) trek to the mountain's flanks for one of the most sophisticated scientific investigations ever conducted on Mars.
But first things first: After testing the robotic arm, Curiosity is ready to roll its wheels on Mars for the first time, more than two weeks after its high-stakes landing. For more about that, check out today's report from mission managers as well as the Curiosity files on NBCNews.com.
Bonus round: Here's another view of the rover and Mount Sharp, pieced together by Kremer and Di Lorenzo from an assortment of navigation camera imagery and "colorized" to reflect Mars' reddish tones:
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo
A colorized view of the Curiosity rover's surroundings draws upon navigation camera imagery, with the Martian sky filled in.
Scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Dawn Sumner, a geology professor at UC Davis, describes the area where the Mars rover landed, and where it goes from there.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and NBCNews.com's other science and space stories, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
We can go to Mars but we can't see Mitt Romney's tax returns.
Or Obama's birth certificate!
Kevin, why did you have to bring politics into this? Now this article is going to be filled with political trash talk. I do like talking about political events, but this is not the right place to talk about them.
Wow... Are you kidding me? The exploration of our own solar system, the possibility of finding life, in our own solar system? How many plantes are in our on galaxy? Billions? And there is a possibility of finding life on the the "planet next door", and you have the frinking balls to bitch about tax returns and birth cirtificates? Please tell me you are kidding.
My goodness... 7+ billion people on this planet NOW. What will be that number be in say, 50 or 100 years? How many people die DAILY starving to death? Stop being so damn short sighted you idiots. The human race needs options. Tax returns and birth cirtificates are NOT going to fix a global problem...
Do you two idiots even know how much a billion is? That is a big @!$%#ing number..... quit being jackasses.
Either of you two have kids? WOW!
I think the curiosity venture is a step. A small one, but thats how we grow. Small steps.. We walk before we run right?
As humans, we learn by doing. Curiosity is doing it. Lets be a bit patient. Mars was likely, (I admit it, I am not an expert), able to support life. So, lets explore. I want my kids, and my grand kids, and their kids, to have a future... Perhaps there is water, maybe not. Maybe we CAN convert mars in....say 50, or....200 years... We spend millions on seeing how fast katsup flows.... Saving, or expanding, the human race should be worth a few bucks...
As always Alan, an excellent article....well done.. I apologize for my rant....
Saw it years ago. Try something else.
@ MrFrost
Thanks for the rant. Saved me the trouble. Some folks will just never get it, period. The Space Program is NOT the problem. NASA has smart people with envision, intelligence, design and human endeavors that far exceed what Mankind has ever done.
I do not believe we have yet begun to see the full social effect and frenzy to come over this spacecraft's successful deployment on Mars. In the weeks, months and years to come, image after image of the new and the strange will be presented on an almost daily basis. Just imagine months or years from now: the 360 degree view from the top of Mount Sharp; from three miles above, looking down into the crater below and beyond to the Martian horizon in all directions. Imagine the spectacular sunrises and sunsets. I don't know if Curiosity can handle such a climb or whether or not it was designed to actually go to the top, but could we be so bold as to imagine what that view will be like, if it is destined to happen? What new and strange terrains will be seen by man's own virtual eyes? How lucky are we all, as we are seeing what our ancestors only dreamed of seeing, and here we are witnessing all this excitement in near real time.
I believe this Curiosity rover is the best money America has ever spent, even if it doesn't move another inch or send back another picture. Kudo's NASA for a job well done. If we can simply be so bold as to imagine what is yet to come, then I believe there will be an abundance of exciting discoveries soon to be revealed by this mysterious planet.
"And there is a possibility of finding life..."
If there's a chance of finding another Mitt and Obama I say shut the whole thing down.
I'm not a fan when the Republitards make asinine postings anymore than when a Libratard does. Try to stay on topic and leave the politics in the political threads.
Byron Raum How do you get "years ago" when it was just revealed August 27th, 2011. So, 3 months to election and no Romney taxes yet. Three years for the "great reveal" of what is said to be Obama's birth certificate. Just 482 days ago after 3 years in the presidency. Hmm, look up your facts before you "think" this president is worth a $hit!
Why not read this: politicalticker-dot-blogs-dot-cnn-dot-com/2011/04/27/white-house-releases-obama-birth-certificate/
If you don't understand what the "dot" means you really are a liberal!
And that has what to do with this article?
curiosity is amusingly significant in its infancy. yet, we should be amazed at the cosmic record available to it.
onward - ho!, pilgrim. let's all give it a big 5 bump! aint science grand?
Jimmy, I was just thinking about something like "Onward, Ho!" or "To the Mountain!" as the message that this picture is sending. It's funny that I'm getting that message from a robot, but I feel as if this is an extension of the human impulse to press forward. Somehow it's a powerful emotion for me, especially now that the rover's shadow (pointing in the same direction) has been added.
I just noticed you wrote a book called "The Case for Pluto". I think Pluto is a very intresting place, I was watching the science channel a few days ago, and it said that when Pluto gets close to the sun, the frozen nitrogen turns into a gas forming a thin atmosphere. Another intresting fact on the science channel was that the sun gets bigger over a slow period of time. When the sun gets big enough, it will dry up the Earth, but at the same time, it will melt the ice on the polar ice caps of Mars. The melting ice of Mars will turn into water and the water will eventually evaporate into the atmosphere. So maybe in a few billion years, earth will look like Venus and Mars will look like Earth.
I notice once again, that NASA has blacked out large sections of the picture. Could this be to cover up the evidence of the GIANT SAND WORMS on Mars? Hmmm?
There will be worms.
I don't think they blacked anything out. I'm pretty sure the data hasn't been downloaded yet. Partial image.
"Go west, young robot lander, go west."
Apologies, sort of, to Horace Greeley.
Mt Sharp is a mere 12km away yet curvature is very evident. Is this due to the camera? I would think that Mars is big enough that the planets curvature wouldn't be so evident. But then I am used to living on a slightly larger rock.
Stop the cover up. It's worm-gate!
There will be worms.
Just for giggles, take a close look at the rocks to the left in the picture and their shadow direction, then take a look at the direction of the rover arms shadow. Here we go again.
Amazing just amazing. GO GO GO GO GO HUMANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They are covering up the location of Colhagen's office. He is withholding air so he can sell it for a profit.
We should have sent a cactus or two for curiosity to plant! It would make the landscape look so much better. ;-)
I just wish more people understood the significance for the human race that this kind of research provides. I wish every science class (from elementary to high school) had to spend 1 day a month covering current scientific endeavors like this, or the LHC, and teach why it is relevant. Maybe it would generate more interest in the scientific disciplines.
Sadly, schools don't teach anymore, they indoctrinate.
Outstanding suggestion!!
schools do teach... which is why the subject of this article is even possible. go be a hater somewhere else.
SAl, you obviosly have not been to a school lately, they cannot celebrate valintines, easter, christmas, OR even in Texas, wear a shirt with Michgan State on it, just what are they teaching, Lets not forget the thousands of erasures on the FCAT papers. Working in the system, we see the real schools.
"SAl, you obviosly have not been to a school lately, they cannot celebrate valintines, easter, christmas, OR even in Texas, wear a shirt with Michgan State on it, just what are they teaching?"
Apparently they are not teaching about holidays. Do you consider that an important core subject?
I wish every student learned at least two languages. Then they might begin to understand other people in the world. If we can't live peacefully on the earth, what is the point of jumping off the earth.
Oh yeah, then we can screw up someplace else and do it in the name of science.
Would be interesting to get an anticipated timeline of what NASA expects to do in the future. Everything seems to have gone absolutely perfectly, which is great...but speaking as an engineer - I keep worrying the other shoe is going to drop. Nothing ever goes perfectly in real life.
Cute. The shadow makes it looks like a cross between ET and the robot in Short Circuit. Is it rude to suggest the engineers may have drawn a bit of inspiration from sources like those for this one?
I'll put that as a plug for the sort of visionary literature that helps fire the human imagination and the science and technical education that makes it a reality. Sadly, there are those who will probably claim this is faked the way the moon landings were...
Well done, NASA...
I do hope we get to see the jpl in morse tracks soon...I just figured that is how historians may know where a specific rover was as it crossed tracks with another rover....probably going to be a past time for historians of the future, going out to try and find diminished tracks and just as much, the same quacksters as today, guys will be out there with knock off wheels rolling them around in the dust and blowing some wind across them in an effort to ???? well, I never knew why they did stuff like that, all I know is it goes way back before the first fossil hunters.....if I were looking for fossils, I would take a detour over to glenolg myself. Perhaps my logic is flawed (and therefore not vulcan) but It seems likely that an area where three geological eras meet would have an increased chance of yielding results....of course I am aware that zero times infinity is still zero.....so I won't bet the proverbial dime on it.
I applaud the brilliant people that can actually make something like the mars rover a reality. Simply amazing to me. Congrats to you all
A vista from another world. How amazing is that? Can hardly wait until the rover scoots over to that mountain and we begin to decipher the geologic history of Mars from its sedimentary rocks
Curiosty killed the cat. The rover is on a dead planet.
NASA should be seeking a planet that humans can live on. The only thing Mars is good for is to send dead people to be buried.
What a waste of money.
Why do you think people use the phrase "developing technology?" It's because each step builds on the previous ones. Our journey to another liveable planet is just starting, and going to a close planet is practice for being able to go to distant ones later. Geeeeeeez, what a silly statement.
Bad troll.
And I don't mean like "Bad dog", I mean like, as a troll you suck at it.
*facepalm*
Jeff, as least don't say ignorant things using your real name.
Here, get an education. It may have.
http://www.space.com/764-mars-habitable-inject-greenhouse-gas.html
"NASA should be seeking a planet that humans can live on."
Outside of the Earth, Mars is as good as it gets in our solar system. We're nowhere close to having the technology to leave our solar system (with live humans) so get over it...
"Waste of money"?
It's strange that every NBC article calls it a "2.5 billion dollar mission", but articles about the colossal waste of resources and human suffering caused by our current wars are never called a "trillion dollar mission".
In my opinion, this Mars mission is one of mankind's finest uses of his resources.
Jeffrey, since you deem Mars to be a waste, and uninhabitable for humans, which planet would YOU explore?
3 days to compose a incomplete mosaic? What did we paid for $2bn? 300 baud?
apparently you don't know how significant the degradation of electromagnetic signals is over long distances. sure, we may have super-sensitive receivers here on earth, but do you suppose there's a power plant on Mars to help boost the power of curiosity's transmissions? Maybe they ran a fiber optic cable there with curiosity?
lol
Free space path loss is reduced by the square of the distance.
The max distance from Earth to Mars (depends on our relative orbits) is something like 401,000,000 km.
So 1/(401x10^6)^2 = 6.22x10^-18
That's the simple number (speed of light, frequency, antenna gain, etc factor in) but yeah... not exactly a lot of power to work with there. Frankly, it's amazing they can have any kind of communications in the first place.
Possible sometime in the future, laser communication could be used. The beam is narrow and the bandwidth is enormous. An earth satellite could relay the data to the surface to avoid the atmosphere.
As Capn-1 points out, Mars is pretty far from Earth. There will be errors in communication and data transmission speeds are significantly less than your what smartphone gets here on Earth due to physical limits (speed of light, etc).
It will be soooo cool to be the astronaut that finally meets up with this rover. It will most likely be oblivious to the human near it's path, other than to record a few images for posterity.
My tax dollars couldn't be more well spent.
So now let's work on manufacturing in space. We need to clean up our asteroid belt. Let's mine the asteroids for the materials to build ever more efficient manufacturing in space.
Two years ago we camped there - not far off Route 15. I'll be sure to look out for the "rover" the next time we visit. Maybe the kids can pose next to it for photos while I buy some turquoise.
Ya got me chucklin and grinnin.
My brother was saying that it looks just like portions of the high desert of southeastern Idaho LOL.
If we find any aliens (on Mars), at least they won't be illegal...
Of course this picture is a fake... I can see ants and a candy wrapper on the ground.
Our sun won't start expanding to red giant proportions for at least 4 - 5 billion years. Terraforming Mars to make it suitable for large colonies of humans and other flora and fauna to exist there, would probably take several hundred years and enormous expense. Bottom line is, we need to take care of what we have here and not screw it up more than we already have.
If our sun expand a few meter.You can kiss the Earth good bye..
michael, the sun is already expanding into a red giant.
paragus, a few meters, in the time it takes, will not kill our planet. adaptation, my friend, adaptation.
Yes, one day we will Terraform Mars, however, that will be a long time from now. There are a number of problems that will need fixing to make it livable and the process will take centuries (if not millenia); including:
- Mars' dynamo has stopped and would need to be restarted to get it to regenerate a magnetosphere (to protect inhabitants from radiation and retain its atmosphere); this, alone, is an enormous task. By capturing an asteroid (or a series of them) of sufficient mass, it could generate enough tidal/frictional heat to restart its dynamo. In a regular orbit, we are talking about a satellite somewhere in the range of 100 to 600 miles in diameter--HUGE. If in a retrograde orbit, a less massive object would be necesary. Earth gets approximately half of its internal heat from radioactive material decay. I would think Mars has a similar level of radioactive materials in its core/mantle, however, we don't really know yet. Perhaps we'll know more after a future lander (one of the Discovery series in 2016 or 2017, I believe) takes seismic readings, core samples, etc.
If only another country built a dog house with dogs bones on Mars. With Rover seeing it. We would have a huge scoop for awhile.
I get goosebumps and chills just looking at the pictures, knowing I am seeing another world. So amazing -- thank you NASA and JPL, thank you.
I know right?! This is so amazing I wish I could live up to the day humans can actually live on another planet!
Our government spends sooooo many billions of dollars on worthless and useless crap its crazy. But I think searching the solar system, and keeping a space program should be far higher up on the priority list than starting wars we have no buisness being a part of or sending millions in aid to countries that hate us. Almost all of the things you use in your day to day life owe some amount of their existance to the space program. And furthering that knowlege is by no means a waste of our money or our time. Its not just about finding life on Mars, its also about understanding Mars. learning about the geology of planets, about atmospheric data, about water in the solar system. We continue to learn, and have learned so much because of space exploration, and now for some stupid reason so much of America has decided we should just give up on it, let china have all the fun let them be the new leaders in space and science. I mean yeah our school system already ranks deplorably low worldwide, we dont know math and science any better than some african countries. And this is an other example of our educational values dropping in favor of TV and internet, fast food and all the other instant gratifications we would rather have. Space is our final frontier, its not just fiction any more. There is so much to learn, and so much to try and understand, its sickening that so many people in our country have decided its not worth the effort any more. We are just going to sit back and let China own us in yet an other way as they send their astronauts to the moon again, probably learn more about it, probably gain advances from it. But we are happy with our big macs, TV, and internet. I mean who wants to explore when we could become fat lazy slabs of crap?
Unfortunately we have sold our soul to China for profit from the junk made by cheap labor. I'm afraid that the sun is setting on the US's day as leader.
Looking at an other world, real pictures of a place humans havent been to. A planet that used to have water flowing around it. Life could very well have started there in some form at one time, its worth every penny to find out. And even if not, its worth every penny to explore, to do things humanity has never done in history. We learn so much about the universe, and I think its a shame to drop funding for the space program in favor of giving cash to corporations, making rich people richer and going to war over fossil fuels instead. There is so much out there we dont know, and trying to learn about it is what leads to cleaner energy, to better materials, to better transportation methods. Any number of items in your house, from your radio, to your TV, to your internet. To materials you use every day from clothes to mechanical components all have their start with the space program. Plus who doesnt like TANG and how many uses do we have for freeze dried foods. Remember the prestige America had when we went to the moon? Remember the world wide bragging rights, remember how great our country was at the time? Corruption and greed have destroyed our nation, and cutting funding for the exploration of our existance and our universe is just an affirmation of where our priorities are. Make sure there is tax cuts for the people that dont need them, make sure the debt system forces people to stay as poor as possible and make sure we give all our jobs away to other countries and then bitch at our own unemployed for being unemployed. We are circling the drain, what a shame.
All planet's had water at some point.You need water for clay to make a object.With out it it is impossible to mold anything...But it does not mean it had life because of h20 was present..
See how friendly this planet Mars is! If this were a Martian ship landing here on Earth we would have them in custody for years for not paying an entry toll. I hope the Martians shoot a rocket launcher at this thing, Now that would be funny. Just kidding!!! but not about the toll.
This actually gives us a great idea of what our planet will look like if we keep on our current path of unsustainable resource consumption and environmental destruction.
Well by looking at the pictures there no Martians and no life.A waste of tax payers money..If they are looking for another earth.I hope the people there are smarter than we have here..
Curiosity is not pointing.
It that Curiosity's robotic thumb that I see on the end of it's robotic arm?
MAYBE IT"S HITCH HIKING.
The ONLY criticism I have of NASA on Curiosity is that had I been in charge, I'd have made sure there were flames painted on the wheels. Give it a little pizazz. And maybe a wiggly Hawaiian girl for the dashboard. Nothing ornate.
Lol you are a fool. ahhaha
Yes, Mike, that would have been Awesome!!
Aaaahhhh.....billions of tax payers $$$$ being spent just on "curiosity" as our national debt is in the gazillions !!!!! What am I missing ?????
What you're "missing" Striker is the same thing you folks ALWAYS miss - that 2 billion is literally a drop in the bucket. It SOUNDS like a lot of money to you, but not to the largest economy in the world. A better question would be "what are we getting on this particular 2 billion investment"? The answer to that is - a lot more than we get on MOST 2 billion investments. Are you aware that the much of the technological revolution you have seen in the past 50 years comes directly from work done by NASA and their associate private industry partners?
People can form a thought and jump to the conclusion that it is a worthy one.
Striker1:
Where else can we use paper to build a space craft to another world? It probably only takes about a square mile of renewable Aspen and a couple hundred acres of cotton to make the money that sent this craft to mars. A couple tons of actual resources like steel, some H2 and O2 for fuel, some plastic, a bit of gold wire, some silicone wafers and other resources. Not much that it would hurt the Earth. Don't worry, Uncle Ben and Brother Barry will print more cash to spread around. You won't starve.
Amazing just amazing. GO GO GO GO GO HUMANS!!!!!!!!!!!!!