NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover takes Color panorama of Gale Crater

August 10, 2012 |

DC Agle and Guy Webster
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Pasadena, CA – The first images from Curiosity’s color Mast Camera, or Mastcam, have been received by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. 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.”

This is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

“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.”

This is a portion of the first color 360-degree panorama from NASA’s Curiosity rover, made up of thumbnails, which are small copies of higher-resolution images. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

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.

“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.

The Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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.

Timeline of Major Mission Events During Curiosity’s Landing

Curiosity’s EDL team releases a timeline for mission milestones (as depicted in this artist’s concept) surrounding the landing of the Mars rover.

The following data were compiled by Curiosity’s Entry, Descent and Landing team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It provides a timeline of critical mission events that occurred on the evening of August 5th PDT (early on August 6th EDT).

Time of Event Occurrence at Mars (PDT)

[10:10:45.7 PM]  Atmospheric Entry
[10:15:04.9 PM]  Parachute Deploy
[10:15:24.6 PM]  Heat Shield Separation
[10:17:38.6 PM]  Rover Separation (from Descent Stage)
[10:17:57.3 PM]  Touchdown

Time Event Occurrence Received on Earth (PDT)

[10:24:33.8 PM]  Atmospheric Entry
[10:28:53.0 PM]  Parachute Deploy
[10:29:12.7 PM]  Heat Shield Separation
[10:31:26.7 PM]  Rover Separation (from Descent Stage)
[10:31:45.4 PM]  Touchdown

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