Images, Curiosity | featured news

Wow, what a view of the Curiosity rover! This is a self-portrait mosaic made from brand new images taken by the MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager), the high-resolution camera located on the turret at the end of MSL’s robotic arm. The arm was moved for each of the 55 images in this mosaic, so the arm doesn’t show up in the mosaic. This montage was put together by Stuart Atkinson, and he notes that these images are just the low-res thumbnail images that have just been sent to Earth. “Imagine what the hi-res version will look like!!” Stu said.

NASA's Curiosity rover has just sent back its first panoramic, color image of Mars' Gale Crater. It’s been on the surface of Mars for less than a week, but already the Curiosity rover is hard at work exploring the surface of Mars. The first part of that exploration, of course, is taking photos to send back to Earth so that the Mars rover team can study the surface. That may not sound like much, but consider this – the camera itself has spent nearly nine months in the cold and vacuum of space. By contrast, most of us get worried about getting our cameras wet even if it’s only sprinkling a little.

NASA's Curiosity rover has beamed back its first color photo from the ancient crater where it landed on Mars and a video showing the last 2 1/2 minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the Martian atmosphere, a sneak peek of a spacecraft landing on another world.