Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Watch Curiosity’s First Movements

Click to animate: this gif image shows the movement of the rear right wheel of NASA’s Curiosity as rover drivers turned the wheels in place at the landing site on Mars. Image credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech

She turned her right rear wheel in and turned her right rear wheel out in a sort of Hokey-Pokey-like action in preparation for actually moving inside Gale Crater. Yesterday, the Curiosity rover’s first movements was this “wiggle” of each of the four corner wheels for the first time. Curiosity Mission Manager Michael Watkins said this was a test of the steering actuators on the wheels, and was critical preparation for Curiosity’s first drive on Mars.

Late last night, the rover team sent commands for doing the first drive, and we’ll likely have information on whether that first drive was successful, as JPL has a news conference planned for 17:00 UTC, 1 pm EDT on Wednesday.

Below is a video animation of the rover’s first arm movements, as well:

Other news from the press conference yesterday is that all the instruments are working well on the rover so far, except for one of the instruments on the weather station.

One of the two sets of Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) wind sensors is not providing data. “One possibility is that pebbles lofted during the landing hit the delicate circuit boards on one of the two REMS booms,” said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “We will have to be more clever about using the remaining wind sensor to get wind speed and direction.”

The rover’s weather station, build by researchers in Spain, checks air temperature, ground temperature, air pressure, wind and other variables every hour at the landing site in Gale Crater. On a typical Martian day, or “sol,” based on measurements so far in the two-week old mission, air temperatures swing from minus 2 to minus 75 Celsius (28 degrees to minus 103 degrees Fahrenheit). Ground temperatures change even more between afternoon and pre-dawn morning, from 3 to minus 91 Celsius (37 degrees to minus 132 degrees Fahrenheit ).

“We will learn about changes from day to day and season to season,” said Javier Gómez-Elvira of the Centro de Astrobiología, Madrid, Spain, principal investigator for REMS.

The team predicts that within a week or so, daily Mars weather reports from Curiosity will become available at this website: http://cab.inta-csic.es/rems/marsweather.html or bit.ly/RzQe6p.

Another instrument provided by Russia is checking for water bound into minerals in the top one meter (three feet) of soil beneath the rover. It employs a technology that is used in oil prospecting on Earth, but had never before been sent to another planet.

“Curiosity has begun shooting neutrons into the ground,” said Igor Mitrofanov of Space Research Institute, Moscow, principal investigator for this instrument, called the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or DAN. “We measure the amount of hydrogen in the soil by observing how the neutrons are scattered, and hydrogen on Mars is an indicator of water.”

The most likely hydrogen to be found in shallow ground of Gale Crater, near the Martian equator, is in hydrated minerals. These are minerals with water molecules, or related ions, bound into the crystalline structure of rocks. They can tenaciously retain water from a wetter past after all free water has gone.

With plans for Curiosity to begin roving, there will soon be new places for all the instruments to measure. The rover team explained the first real drive today will be a very simple execution: forward about 3 meters, then a turn in place of 90 degrees to the right, then a 2-meter drive backwards. Estimates are the rover will end up about 3 meters from its current position and be facing south instead of east.

Emily Lakdawalla has a nice 4-view animation of the rover’s wheel wiggle, showing three wheels and how the shadow of the rover itself moved.

Posted on by Jason Major

Take a Look Through Curiosity’s ChemCam

This (adjusted) image was taken by ChemCam’s Remote Micro-Imager on Sol 15 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL)

While Curiosity has been getting a good look around its landing spot on Mars, taking in the sights and sending back some impressive views of distant hills and Gale Crater’s enormous central peak, it’s also been peering very closely at some tiny targets just meters away — with its head-mounted, laser-powered and much-touted ChemCam.

The images above and below were acquired by ChemCam’s Remote Micro-Imager on August 21, the 15th “Sol” of the mission. A full-sized image accessed from the public MSL mission site, it’s been brightened quite a bit to show the details of the target rocks.

Mounted to Curiosity’s “head”, just above its Mastcam camera “eyes”, ChemCam combines a powerful laser with a telescope and spectrometer that can analyze the light emitted by zapped materials, thereby determining with unprecedented precision what Mars’ rocks are really made of.

So even though the rover hasn’t actually roved anywhere yet, it’s still performing valuable scientific investigations of Mars — without moving a single wheel. (UPDATE: actually, Curiosity has begun to do some roving — here are some images of its first wheel tracks!)

Read: Curiosity Blasts First Mars Rock with Powerful Laser Zapper

Because ChemCam uses a laser, Curiosity can examine many targets — up to a dozen — within a small time period without having to drive right up to them. Even the dustiest rocks won’t pose a problem for ChemCam – one or two zaps with its laser will be enough to vaporize any loose surface material.

In addition to searching for the building blocks of life hidden inside rocks, ChemCam will also serve a precautionary role for future explorers by helping identify the potential toxicity of Mars’ soil and dust. When astronauts one day land on Mars, they are going to get dusty. It’s important to know if Mars’ dust contains anything dangerous like lead, arsenic (and who knows what else!)

See the latest images from the MSL mission — including more ChemCam pictures — here.

Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL. Edited by J. Major.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Takes Aim at Martian Destination – Mount Sharp

Image Caption: Curiosity Points to Mount Sharp. Curiosity unstowed the robotic arm on Aug. 20 and aimed it directly at her Martian drive destination – Mount Sharp. This mosaic of the robotic arm was assembled from navigation camera images from Sols 2, 12 and 14 and shows 18,000 foot high Mount Sharp in the background and the shadow of the martian robot’s head at center. Curiosity will search for hydrated minerals using the robotic arm and a neutron detector on the body. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Curiosity flexed her mighty robotic arm for the first time on Monday (Aug. 20) and aimed the hand-like tool turret squarely at Mount Sharp, her ultimate driving destination.

If you want to see exactly where Curiosity is headed and why she was sent to Gale Crater, just take a look at the new mosaic assembled by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo.

Curiosity is pointing with her robotic arm right at Mount Sharp, the huge 18,000 foot tall (5.5 kilometer) mysterious mound that covers the center of the 96 mile (154 km) wide crater. Our mosaic was prominently featured on the front page of NBC News and in a new article by Alan Boyle – here

The layered sediments in Mount Sharp could unveil the geologic history of Mars stretching back billions of years and reveal why the planet transitioned from an ancient, wet period of flowing liquid water on the surface to the dry, desiccated era of today.

As Curiosity unstowed and raised the 7 foot long (2.1 m) arm and reached towards Mount Sharp, the mast mounted navigation cameras on her head snapped a series of black and white images that included the shadow of NASA’s newest Martian robot. The 6 wheeled, car-sized rover made a harrowing pinpoint touchdown barely 2 weeks ago.

The arm is critical to the success of the mission because it will be used to maneuver a sophisticated turret, mounted at the arms terminus and laden with scientific instruments. It weighs a hefty 66 pounds (30 kg) and is about 2 feet in diameter. The turret includes a high resolution focusable color camera, a drill, an X-Ray spectrometer, a scoop and mechanisms for sieving and portioning samples of powdered rock and soil.

“We continue to hit home runs. We unstowed the robotic arm and took a look at the tools on the end of the arm,” said Curiosity Mission Manager Michael Watkins of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) at a news briefing on Tuesday, Aug. 21. “It’s kind of a Swiss army knife there where we have a lot of instruments. We wanted to make sure all of that was working by doing these first motor checks. All of that went successfully.”

Watkins said the team was thrilled to finally see images of the arm deployed on Mars after seeing thousands of engineering test images.

“We have looked at images thousands of times in our test environment and I always see the walls of the test lab there.Now to see the arm out there deployed with Mars out there in the background is just a great feeling.”

The next step is more tests to confirm the arms utility and movements and calibrate the instruments . “We will fully check out the arm, drill and processing unit,” said Louise Jandura of JPL, sample system chief engineer for Curiosity, at the briefing. “The arm has already performed all these motions on Earth, but in a different gravity condition and that gravity does matter. Our turret at the end of the arm weighs as much as a small child and the differences in gravity change the amount of sag at the end of the arm. We want to be able to fine tune these end-point positions. So it will take some time to put the arm through all its paces.”

What’s more is that Curiosity is wiggling her wheels and is all set to make her first martian test drive on Wednesday.

“Late tonight, we plan to send Curiosity the commands for doing our first drive tomorrow,” said Watkins. “Curiosity will drive about 10 feet, turn right and then back up so her rear wheels will wind up about where her front wheels are now. The cameras will photograph the tracks and evaluate the performance of Curiosity driving ability and the softness of the surface soil.”

The 1 ton mega robot is also equipped with the DAN (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons) instrument provided by Russia to check for water bound into minerals as hydrates in the top three feet (one meter) of soil beneath the rover.

“Curiosity has begun shooting neutrons into the ground,” said Igor Mitrofanov of Space Research Institute, Moscow, principal investigator for DAN. “We measure the amount of hydrogen in the soil by observing how the neutrons are scattered, and hydrogen on Mars is an indicator of water.”

The mission goal is to ascertain whether the Red Planet was ever capable of supporting microbial life, past or present and to search for the signs of life in the form of organic molecules during the 2 year primary mission phase.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Panoramic Vista of Mount Sharp (at right) and Gale Crater from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. Curiosity will eventually climb 3.4 mile high Mount Sharp in search of hydrated minerals. This colorized panoramic mosaic shows was assembled from new navigation camera (Navcam) images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 and Sol 12 and colorized based on Mastcam imagery from Curiosity. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. See black and white version below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo Lorenzo – www.kenkremer.com

Posted on by Jason Major

Curiosity’s Sundial Carries a Message of Hope

Image from Curiosity's Mastcam shows the rover's MarsDial (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

 A recent high-definition image from Curiosity’s Mastcam shows the rover’s sundial (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

While Curiosity is definitely loaded up with some of the most high-tech instruments ever made to investigate the surface of Mars, it also carries a very low-tech instrument: a sundial (aka the “MarsDial”) which can be used to determine the position of the Sun in the sky and the season on Mars just like they do here on Earth. Curiosity’s sundial also has additional color calibration tools for the rover’s Mastcam, which captured the image above on August 19 — the 13th “Sol” of the mission.

The connection between a device invented by people thousands of years ago being in use today on a robotic explorer on another planet didn’t go unnoticed by the Mars Exploration Rover team either; in addition to the words “Mars 2012” and “To Mars, To Explore” around its top bezel, Curiosity’s sundial also carries a message of history, hope and inspiration printed along its edges…

Along with line drawings and the word for “Mars” in sixteen languages, Curiosity’s sundial bears the following inscription:

“For millennia, Mars has stimulated our imaginations. First, we saw Mars as a wandering star, a bringer of war from the abode of the gods. In recent centuries, the planet’s changing appearance in telescopes caused us to think that Mars had a climate like the Earth’s. Our first space age views revealed only a cratered, Moon-like world, but later missions showed that Mars once had abundant liquid water. Through it all, we have wondered: Has there been life on Mars? To those taking the next steps to find out, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery.”

Curiosity’s successful landing on Mars at 10:31 p.m. on August 5, 2012 (PDT) was only the first (although very exciting!) step of its mission, and the first of hopefully many next steps to explore our neighboring world. Perhaps one day this message will be revisited by human explorers on Mars who may then reflect back on how it all began, and all of the innovations, hope and — well, curiosity — that made each of their rust-dusted steps possible.

Follow the sun, Curiosity!

Find out more about Curiosity’s many science and exploration instruments on JPL’s interactive 3D page here, and keep up with the latest MSL downloaded images here.

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Sweeping Panoramic Vista of Mount Sharp and Gale Crater from Curiosity

Image Caption: Panoramic Vista of Mount Sharp (at right) and Gale Crater from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. Curiosity will eventually climb 3.4 mile high Mount Sharp in search of hydrated minerals. This colorized panoramic mosaic shows more than half of the landing site surrounding Curiosity in the distance to the visible peak of Mount Sharp and a portion of the stowed robotic arm (at left) and the shadow of the camera mast (center) in the foreground. The mosaic was assembled from new navigation camera (Navcam) images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 and Sol 12 and colorized based on Mastcam imagery from Curiosity. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. See black and white version below. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

At last the Curiosity mega rover is beaming back the first higher resolution panoramic images that many of us have longed to see – a complete view to the visible summit of towering Mount Sharp, the mountain she will scale, surrounded by the sweeping vistas of the tall eroded rim of Gale Crater, her touchdown site barely 2 weeks ago.

See our panoramic mosaics above and below incorporating the best available raw images to date. Curiosity’s stowed robotic arm and the shadow cast by the camera mast are visible in the foreground.

The new images from Curiosity’s mast mounted navigation cameras (Navcam) show the huge mountains peak to as far up as the rover can see from her vantage point some 7 kilometers (4 miles) from the base of the 18,000 foot (5.5 km) high Mount Sharp which is taller than Mount Rainier, the tallest peak in the contiguous United States.

By stitching together the newly received full resolution Navcam images from Sols 2 and 12, we (Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo) have created a panoramic mosaic showing the breathtaking expanse to the top of Mount Sharp combined with the perspective of Gale Crater from the rover’s eye view on the crater’s gravelly surface.

Image Caption: Panoramic Vista of Mount Sharp (at right) and Gale Crater from NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. Curiosity will eventually climb 3.4 mile high Mount Sharp in search of hydrated minerals. This panoramic mosaic shows more than half of the landing site surrounding Curiosity in the distance to the peak of Mount Sharp and a portion of the stowed robotic arm (at left) and the shadow of the camera mast (center) in the foreground. The mosaic was assembled from new navigation camera (Navcam) images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 and Sol 12. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo – www.kenkremer.com

In coming weeks, Curiosity will take aim at Mount Sharp with the pair of high resolution Mastcam cameras (34 mm and 100) mounted on the rover’s mast and eventually provide much clearer images to the peak resulting in the most spectacular pictures imaginable of the mysterious mountain that holds the mother lode of hydrated mineral deposits that the robot was sent to investigate by NASA. So far the Mastcam cameras have only imaged the lower reaches of Mount Sharp.

The nuclear powered, car sized Curiosity rover was specifically engineered to accomplish a pinpoint landing inside the 96 mile (154 km) wide Gale Crater beside Mount Sharp so she could scale the mountain and take soil and rock samples of the clays and hydrated sulfated minerals that scientists believe formed in liquid water that flowed billions of years ago.

Mount Sharp is a gigantic mound that covers the entire central portion of Gale Crater and learning how it formed is one of the many mysteries researchers seek to unveil with the highly sophisticated 1 ton robot.

John Grotzinger, the project scientist for NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover, says that the hydrated minerals are all located in about the first 400 meters or so of Mount Sharp’s vertical elevation, based on spectral data collected by NASA and ESA spacecraft orbiting Mars. He says Curiosity will spend about a year traversing and investigating targets on the crater floor before reaching the foothills of Mount Sharp.

Curiosity will eventually spend years climbing Mount Sharp in the valleys between the 1 to 3 story tall mesas and buttes at the giant mountain’s base and lower elevations in search of sedimentary layers of the clay and hydrated sulfate mineral deposits.

The powerful ChemCam laser that Curiosity successfully test fired today will be absolutely key to finding the best targets for detailed analysis by her 10 state of the art science instruments.

The mission goal is to ascertain whether the Red Planet was ever capable of supporting microbial life, past or present and to search for the signs of life in the form of organic molecules during the 2 year primary mission phase.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Gale Crater and Mount Sharp from orbit with Curiosity landing site ellipse

Posted on by Ken Kremer

Curiosity Blasts 1st Mars Rock with Powerful Laser Zapper

Image Caption: PewPew !! – First Laser Zapped rock on Mars. This composite image, with magnified insets, depicts the first laser test by the Chemistry and Camera, or ChemCam, instrument aboard NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. The composite incorporates a Navigation Camera image taken prior to the test, with insets taken by the camera in ChemCam. The circular insert highlights the rock before the laser test. The square inset is further magnified and processed to show the difference between images taken before and after the laser interrogation of the fist-sized rock, called “Coronation.” It is the first rock on any extraterrestrial planet to be investigated with such a laser test. ChemCam inaugurated use of its laser when it used the beam to investigate Coronation during Curiosity’s 13th day after landing. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP

NASA’s Curiosity rover successfully blasted a Mars rock with a powerful laser beam, for the first time in history, today Aug. 19, inaugurating a revolutionary new era in planetary science with a new type of instrument that will deliver bountiful discoveries. The fist sized Martian rock zapped during the maiden laser target practice shots was appropriately dubbed “Coronation”.

The ChemCam instrument mounted at the top of Curiosity’s mast fired a total of 30 one-million watt pulses over a 10 second period at the 3 inch wide rock that vaporized a pinhead sized spot into an ionized, glowing plasma.

Each pulse lasted about five one-billionths of a second and was sufficient in energy to generate a spark of plasma to be observed with the ChemCam telescope and trio of spectrometers below deck in order to identify the elemental composition.

“Yes, I’ve got a laser beam attached to my head. I’m not ill tempered; I zapped a rock for science. PewPew,” tweeted Curiosity.

The NASA composite image above shows Coronation before and after the laser shots – watch out little Martians !

“We got a great spectrum of Coronation — lots of signal,” said ChemCam Principal Investigator Roger Wiens of Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M. “Our team is both thrilled and working hard, looking at the results. After eight years building the instrument, it’s payoff time!”

Image caption: This mosaic shows the first target Curiosity zapped with the ChemCam laser, before being blasted on Aug. 19. The 3 inch wide rock was provisionally named N165 and is now called “Coronation”. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/LANL

ChemCam recorded spectra from the laser-induced spark during all 30 pulses at 6,144 different wavelengths of ultraviolet, visible and infrared light. The purpose of this test was target practice to make sure the laser could be precisely aimed and to characterize the instrument.

Ultimately the goal is use the laser to penetrate below the dusty surface and reveal the interior composition of the targeted rocks using the telescopic camera and spectrometers.

ChemCam, which stands for Chemistry and Camera, is a joint project between the US and France said Wiens at a news briefing on Aug. 17. “The science team is half French and half US.”

“It’s surprising that the data are even better than we ever had during tests on Earth, in signal-to-noise ratio,” said ChemCam Deputy Project Scientist Sylvestre Maurice of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie (IRAP) in Toulouse, France. “It’s so rich, we can expect great science from investigating what might be thousands of targets with ChemCam in the next two years.”

ChemCam is a remote sensing instrument and will get the most use of any of Curiosity’s instruments. It will be analyzing about 14,000 samples and help winnow down the targets and guide Curiosity to the most interesting samples for more detailed analysis, Wiens explained.

ChemCam uses a technique called laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy that has precedent in determining the composition of targets in other extreme environments such as inside nuclear reactors and on the sea floor, but is unprecedented in interplanetary exploration.

NASA’s 1 ton mega rover Curiosity is the biggest and most complex robot ever sent to the surface of another planet, sporting a payload of 10 state of the art science instruments weighing 15 times more than any prior roving vehicle. Curiosity’s goal is to determine if Mars was ever capable of supporting microbial life, past or present and to search for the signs of life in the form of organic molecules during the 2 year primary mission phase.

Ken Kremer

Posted on by Ken Kremer

1st Laser Firing and 1st Motion Imminent for Curiosity

Image Caption: This self-portrait shows the deck of NASA’s Curiosity rover from the rover’s Navigation camera. The image is distorted because of the wide field of view. The back of the rover can be seen at the top left of the image, and two of the rover’s right side wheels can be seen on the left. The undulating rim of Gale Crater forms the lighter color strip in the background. Bits of gravel, about 0.4 inches (1 centimeter) in size, are visible on the deck of the rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The 1st firing of Curiosity’s rock zapping laser and 1st motion of her six wheels is imminent and likely to take place within the next 24 to 72 hours said mission scientists at Friday’s (Aug 17) media briefing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., home to mission control for the nuclear-powered, car-sized robot.

Furthermore the team has decided on the target of her 1st Martian Trek, a science hot spot dubbed Glenelg because it lies at the natural intersection of three different types of geologic formations (see graphic below), including layered bedrock and an alluvial fan through which liquid water flowed eons ago. Glenelg is about 400 meters (1300 feet) east of the rover’s landing site.

With each passing Sol, or Martian day, NASA biggest, best and most daring mobile lab becomes ever more capable, like a growing child, as engineers energize and successfully test more and more of her highly advanced systems to accomplish feats of exploration and discovery never before possible.

“Everything is going really well,” said John Grotzinger, project scientist for NASA’s Curiosity Mars Science Lab (MSL) rover. “The excitement from the point of view of the science team is all the instruments continue to check out.”

Image Caption: Martian Treasure Map -This image shows the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover and destinations scientists want to investigate. Curiosity landed inside Gale Crater on Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT) at the green dot, within the Yellowknife quadrangle. The team has chosen for it to move toward the region marked by a blue dot that is nicknamed Glenelg. That area marks the intersection of three kinds of terrain. The science team thought the name Glenelg was appropriate because, if Curiosity traveled there, it would visit it twice — both coming and going — and the word Glenelg is a palindrome. Then, the rover will aim to drive to the blue spot marked “Base of Mt. Sharp”, which is a natural break in the dunes that will allow Curiosity to begin scaling the lower reaches of Mount Sharp. At the base of Mt. Sharp are layered buttes and mesas that scientists hope will reveal the area’s geological history. The image was acquired by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

Curiosity will blast her first rock, dubbed N165, in the history of planetary science as early as Saturday night, Aug. 18, with the powerful mast-mounted laser and telescope on the Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam that includes spectrometers inside the rover.

ChemCam is a remote sensing instrument. It will get the most use by analyzing about 14,000 samples and help winnow down the targets and guide Curiosity to the most interesting samples for detailed analysis, Wiens explained.

“Rock N165 looks like your typical Mars rock, about three inches wide. It’s about 10 feet away,” said Roger Wiens, principal investigator of the ChemCam instrument from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “We are going to hit it with 14 millijoules of energy 30 times in 10 seconds. It is not only going to be an excellent test of our system, it should be pretty cool too.”

ChemCam has a range of about 23 feet (7 meters). It fires with a million watts of power for 5 billionths of a second, sufficient energy to excite a pinhead sized spot to a glowing plasma that the instrument observes with the spectrometer below deck to identify the chemical composition.

Image caption: This mosaic image shows the first target NASA’s Curiosity rover aims to zap with a laser on its Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument, a rock provisionally named N165. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/LANL

“We are very excited. Our team has waited eight long years to get to this date and we’re happy that everything is looking good so far,” said Wiens. “Hopefully we’ll be back early next week and be able to talk about how Curiosity’s first laser shots went.”

We will take images of Rock N165 before and after the laser firing. The camera has the same resolution as the Mastcam and can take images that resolve to the width of a human hair from 7 feet away.

Engineers plan to turn the rover’s wheels over the next few days and execute a short test drive and turns of about 10 feet (3 meters).

Grotzinger indicated the drive to Glenelg could take a month or more.

“We will drive efficiently to Glenelg and it will take about 3 to 4 weeks. Along the way we may do scooping to take some soil samples if we find fine grained materials”

Glenelg, a palindrome, is also the 1st location where Curiosity will actually drill into rocks. Then it will deliver sifted samples into the two analytical chemistry instruments, SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) and CheMin (Chemistry and Minerology), which will determine the chemical and mineralogical composition and search for signs of organic molecules – the carbon based molecules that are the building blocks of life.

“We’ll stay and do about a month or more of science at Glenelg”

“With such a great landing spot in Gale Crater, we literally had every degree of the compass to choose from for our first drive,” Grotzinger said. “We had a bunch of strong contenders. It is the kind of dilemma planetary scientists dream of, but you can only go one place for the first drilling for a rock sample on Mars. That first drilling will be a huge moment in the history of Mars exploration.”

After thoroughly investigating Glenelg until around the end of this calendar year, then it’s off to Mount Sharp, an 18,000 foot tall mound (5.5 km) that’s the missions ultimate destination because it preserves millions to billions of years of Martian history, stretching from the wet water era of billions of years ago to the more recent desiccated era. It could take a year or so to reach the base.
Mount Sharp is about 7 kilometers (4.4 miles) distant from the current location of Curiosity.

“What’s really cool about this topography is that the crater rim kind of looks like the Mojave Desert and now what you see here kind of looks like the Four Corners area of the western U.S., or maybe around Sedona, Ariz., where you’ve got these buttes and mesas made out of these layered, kind of light-toned reddish-colored outcrops. There’s just a rich diversity over there,” Grotzinger said at the briefing.

Curiosity will spend years climbing Mount Sharp in search of sedimentary layers of clays and sulfates, the hydrated minerals that form in flowing liquid water and could hold the ingredients of life.

New high resolution images of the foothills of Mount Sharp from Curiosity show the giant mountain’s base is littered with mesas and buttes ranging in height from 1 to 3 story tall buildings, with valleys in between.

Curiosity’s goal is to search for signs of Martian microbial habitats, past or present, with the most sophisticated suite of 10 state of the art science instruments ever sent to the surface of another planet.

Ken Kremer

Image Caption: Curiosity’s Wheels on Mars set to Rove soon inside Gale Crater. This colorized mosaic shows Curiosity wheels, UHF antenna, nuclear power source and pointy low gain antenna (LGA) in the foreground looking to the eroded northern rim of Gale Crater in the background. The mosaic was assembled from full resolution Navcam images snapped by Curiosity on Sol 2 on Aug. 8. Image stitching and processing by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Ken Kremer/Marco Di Lorenzo

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

First Full (Raw) View of Mt. Sharp from Curiosity

The latest raw images downloaded from the Curiosity rover provides the first full view of Mt. Sharp (Aeolis Mons). Stuart Atkinson has stitched together images from the Navigation Camera to give us the first full look at Gale Crater’s central mound.

Another image wizard, Damien Bouic has created a truly spectacular view of Mt. Sharp, which includes parts of the rover itself and the blazing Sun. This image comes from forward Hazard Avoidance camera on the day of the landing. It’s a wide-angle, fisheye camera, according to Emily Lakdawalla, and while it is a low-resolution image, the “poster” Bouic created is truly stunning.

But as Stu points out on his new and wonderful blog “The Gale Gazette,” while we can now see the full northern face of the mountain, we’re not actually seeing all of Mt. Sharp nor the highest peak. “This isn’t the summit at all. Far from it,” Stu writes.

The actual summit is hidden by the highest point visible to Curiosity, and is just the ‘front’ of Mt Sharp as seen from Curiosity’s landing site.

See Stu’s image below for analysis:

Caption: Google Mars view of Curiosity’s landing site and Aeolis Mons. Annotations by Stuart Atkinson.

What this means is that Curiosity probably won’t ever really see the the highest point on Aeolis Mons… unless she’s a really great mountain climber and has a really long extended mission, making it to the highest point now visible from the landing site.

“I’m a bit worried that we won’t get to see that summit at all,” Stu wrote. “The closer we get to Mt. Sharp’s base, the more mountain will be between us and the summit. And once Curiosity reaches the foothills of the mountain, the viewing angle will just be completely wrong, the summit will be hidden by the rising terrain.”

There’s also a wonderful color image put out by JPL and Malin Space Science Systems yesterday:

Caption: Curiosity’s 34-millimeter Mast Camera acquired this high-resolution image on Aug. 8, 2012 PDT showing layered deposits. A scale bar indicates a distance of 2 kilometers (1.2 miles). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This image is taken from a mosaic and shows the view from the landing site of NASA’s Curiosity rover toward the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, where Curiosity is likely to begin its ascent through hundreds of meters of layered deposits. The lower several hundred meters show evidence of bearing hydrated minerals, based on orbiter observations. The terrain Curiosity will explore is marked by hills, buttes, mesas and canyons on the scale of one-to-three story buildings, and as MSL’s John Grotzinger said yesterday at the Curiosity press conference, the view looks very much like the Four Corners region of the western United States.

JPL did do a little processing of this image however, and shows the colors modified as if the scene were transported to Earth and illuminated by terrestrial sunlight. This processing, called “white balancing,” is useful to scientists for recognizing and distinguishing rocks by color in more familiar lighting.

You can see more images from Curiosity at the JPL Photojournal, and also see the latest raw views here. The wonderful photo-magicians at UnmannedSpaceflight.com are having a marvelous time with all the new images from Curiosity, and you can always see what they’ve come up with — which includes multiple mosaics and color versions hot off the photons of the latest raw images from MSL. Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Blog is also working her imaging processing software to the max, so check out her latest posts, too!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Two New Videos Show Curiosity’s Touchdown and Heat Shield Hitting Mars

Wow, this is better than any theatrical movies of fictional ships landing on Mars, because this is REAL! The images and videos from the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) camera on the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft keep getting more amazing as the science team goes through their data and refines all the awesome action events from landing that the camera was able to capture. The video above is from a sequence of images which shows Curiosity’s heat shield slamming into the surface and raising a cloud of dust!! MARDI took the images while the rover was still suspended on a parachute and, of course, after the spacecraft had jettisoned the heat shield.

We also have a full resolution color MARDI image below which was sent to us by Rolf Wahl Olsen, pointing out where the heat shield is sitting on the surface.

And another great video below is of Curiosity gently touching down on Mars. This was also taken by MARDI and is a higher resolution version that what was previously available. MARDI is on the bottom of the rover, so you see the surface of Mars coming up at you, and then see the dust swirling as the sky crane’s rocket thrusters blasted the Mars regolith. Additionally, on the descent, one of the rover’s wheel’s comes into view as it unfolds in preparation for landing! Awesome!

UPDATE: (Aug. 19)

This video was put together by Doug Ellison of UnmannedSpaceflight.com, which shows Curiosity’s entire descent, starting with the heat shield jettison until touchdown and provides a “smoother” view of the entire landing:

Caption: High resolution image from MARDI of Curiosity’s descent. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS

Click on the image for a larger version, or see the original raw version here. “It’s the little back irregular spot in the middle near the bottom edge,” Olsen said. “It’s not in the image before that, and it fits perfectly with the ‘crime scene’ photo released earlier,” which you can see here. If you look closely, the impact crater is even visible in this image!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Mohawk Guy Provides Update on Curiosity Rover

JPL’s Bobak Ferdowsi — famous for the star-spangled Mohawk hairdo he sported on Curiosity’s landing night — provides an update on what the newest Mars rover has been up to (checking out instruments) and how next week should include big moments like the first test drive and firing up that laser.

In addition to great hair, Ferdowsi is a Flight Director for the Curiosity rover team.

Ferdowsi in JPL’s Mission Control during Curiosity’s landing.