Nasa’s latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.
It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views — of Mars and the journey there — are yet to come.
“Spectacular,” mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. “We’ve not had that before.”
The nuclear-powered, six-wheel Curiosity will spend the next two years chiselling into rocks and scooping up soil at Gale Crater to determine whether the environment ever had the right conditions for microbes to thrive. It will spend a chunk of its time driving to Mount Sharp where images from space reveal signs of past water on the lower flanks.Since parking itself inside an ancient crater on Sunday night, Curiosity has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings. It beamed back the first colour picture on Tuesday revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.
The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that Nasa processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.
Curiosity’s journey to Mars spanned eight months and 566 million kilometres. It’ll be several weeks before it takes its first drive and flexes its robotic arm. Since landing, engineers have been busy performing health checkups on its systems and instruments.
