NASA's Curiosity Beams Back a Color 360 of Gale Crater

Aug. 9, 2012

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

DC Agle / Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-393-9011/818-354-6278
agle@jpl.nasa.gov / guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

RELEASE: 12-275

NASA'S CURIOSITY BEAMS BACK A COLOR 360 OF GALE CRATER

PASADENA, Calif. -- The first images from Curiosity's color Mast
Camera (Mastcam) have been received by scientists at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. 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."

The Curiosity team also continued to downlink high-resolution
black-and-white images from its Navigation Camera (Navcam). These
individual images have been stitched together to provide a
high-resolution Navcam panorama, including a glimpse of the rover's
deck. Evident on some portions of the deck are some small Martian
pebbles.

"The latest Navcam images show us 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 0.4 inches [one centimeter] in size and
should pose no problems for mission operations. It will be
interesting to see how long our hitchhikers stick around."

Curiosity's color panorama of Gale Crater can be found at:

http://1.usa.gov/P7VsUw

For additional Curiosity images, visit:

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 Albedo of Neutrons instruments were each energized and went
through a preliminary checkout. The team also performed a check on
the rover's second flight computer.

Before landing, the mission's science team began the process of
creating a geological map of about 150 square miles (390 square
kilometers) within Gale Crater, including the landing area.

"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 (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 Exploration 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.


To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five
times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site
places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's
interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and
sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Exploration Rover projects
are managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at
Headquarters in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built
the orbiter.

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


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