NASA - Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) patch.
August 6, 2012
The car-size, one-ton rover Curiosity touched down on Mars at 1:31 a.m. EDT Monday.
Curiosity - Robot Geologist and Chemist in One!
The landing marks the beginning of a two-year prime mission to investigate one of the most intriguing places on Mars.
Landing report:
07:15 (CET) - Curiosity Sheds Its Cruise Stage
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory carrying the Curiosity rover has separated from the cruise stage that carried it from Earth to the Red Planet. The rover, snug between a protective back shell and heat shield, is about 10 minutes away from entering the Martian atmosphere and about 17 minutes away from landing. Thrusters on the back shell are orienting the spacecraft so the heat shield faces forward in preparation for entering the atmosphere. At this stage, the Mars Science Laboratory Entry, Descent and Landing Instrument (MEDLI) suite begins taking measurements related to the performance of the heat shield that will aid in the design of future missions.
Image above: This artist's still shows how NASA's Curiosity rover will communicate with Earth during landing. As the rover descends to the surface of Mars, it will send out two different types of data: basic radio-frequency tones that go directly to Earth (pink dashes) and more complex UHF radio data (blue circles) that require relaying by orbiters. NASA's Odyssey orbiter will pick up the UHF signal and relay it immediately back to Earth, while NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will record the UHF data and play it back to Earth at a later time. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Communicating with Curiosity
07:25 (CET) - Sailing Through the Martian Atmosphere
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory has entered the Martian atmosphere. The top of Mars' atmosphere is a gradual transition to interplanetary space, not a sharp boundary. In addition, the entry point is not directly above the landing site. While descending from that altitude to the surface, the spacecraft will also be traveling eastward relative to the Mars surface, covering a ground-track distance of about 390 miles (about 630 kilometers) between the atmospheric entry point and the touchdown target. Two tungsten weights will be released to shift the spacecraft's center of mass and give it the lift it needs to fly through the atmosphere.
07:29 (CET) - Parachute Pops Open
The parachute guiding NASA's Mars Science Laboratory to the surface of Mars has opened. At this point, the rover has already slowed down considerably due to friction with the atmosphere. The parachute, which is 51 feet (nearly 16 meters) in diameter, deploys about 254 seconds after entry, at an altitude of about 7 miles (11 kilometers) and a velocity of about 900 mph (about 405 meters per second).
Gale Crater: New Home of Mars Rover Curiosity
This view of Gale is a mosaic of observations made in the visible-light portion of the spectrum by the Thermal Emission Imaging System camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.
07:32 (CET) - Curiosity Lands on Mars
Rover delivered by skycrane
NASA's Curiosity rover has landed on Mars! Its descent-stage retrorockets fired, guiding it to the surface. Nylon cords lowered the rover to the ground in the "sky crane" maneuver. When the spacecraft sensed touchdown, the connecting cords were severed, and the descent stage flew out of the way. The time of day at the landing site is mid-afternoon -- about 3 p.m. local Mars time at Gale Crater. The time at JPL's mission control is about 10:31 p.m. Aug. 5 PDT (early morning EDT).
Image above: Explosion of joy in the control room after the successful landing of Curiosity on Mars.
Seven Minutes of Terror!
First images sent by Curiosity
Curiosity first image
It once was one small step... now it's six big wheels. Here's a look at one of them on the soil of Mars!
Second image sent by Curiosity
Here's a better picture where you can see Curiosity shadow in Gale Crater on Mars.
Seventeen Cameras on Curiosity
This graphic shows the locations of the cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover. The rover's mast features seven cameras: the Remote Micro Imager, part of the Chemistry and Camera suite; four black-and-white Navigation Cameras (two on the left and two on the right) and two color Mast Cameras (Mastcams). The left Mastcam has a 34-millimeter lens and the right Mastcam has a 100-millimeter lens. There is one camera on the end of a robotic arm that is stowed in this graphic; it is called the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).
There are nine cameras hard-mounted to the rover: two pairs of black-and-white Hazard Avoidance Cameras in the front, another two pair mounted to the rear of the rover, (dashed arrows in the graphic) and the color Mars Descent Imager (MARDI).
The landing will end a 36-week flight from Earth and begin at two-year prime mission on Mars. Researchers will use Curiosity's 10 science instruments to investigate whether Martian environmental conditions have ever been favorable for microbial life.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/mars and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
Images, Videos, Text, Credits: NASA / NASA TV / JPL-Caltech.
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