NASA rover Curiosity lands on Mars
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — The robotic explorer Curiosity's daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist, describing the first images of its mechanical gymnastics.
Hours after NASA learned the rover had arrived on target, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate maneuvers it made to hit the Martian soil safely.
"It's a spectacular image," said NASA research scientist Luther Beegle, as NASA planned to release a fresh black and white picture.
Beegle described a shot that shows the rover and the parachute needed to help gently land it. Extraordinary efforts were needed because the rover weighs one ton, and the Martian atmosphere is very thin, making it hard to slow the spacecraft down.
More images, including video of the landing and beautiful color shots of Mars, will follow in days to come. And soon it will be time to get "down and dirty" and start digging into the red planet's past, Beegle said.
Cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory late Sunday after signals from space indicated Curiosity had survived the harrowing plunge.
"Touchdown confirmed," said engineer Allen Chen. "We're safe on Mars."Minutes after the landing signal reached Earth at 10:32 p.m. PDT, Curiosity beamed back the first black-and-white pictures from inside the crater showing its wheel and its shadow, cast by the afternoon sun.
"We landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful, really beautiful," said engineer Adam Steltzner, who led the team that devised the tricky landing routine.
It was NASA's seventh landing on Earth's neighbor; many other attempts by the U.S. and other countries to zip past, circle or set down on Mars have gone awry.
The arrival was an engineering tour de force, debuting never-before-tried acrobatics packed into "seven minutes of terror" as Curiosity sliced through the Martian atmosphere at 13,000 mph.
In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground at a snail-paced 2 mph. A video camera was set to capture the most dramatic moments — which would give Earthlings their first glimpse of a touchdown on another world.
JPL Director Charles Elachi compared the team to Olympic athletes.
"This team came back with the gold," he said.
The extraterrestrial feat injected a much-needed boost to NASA, which is debating whether it can afford another robotic Mars landing this decade. At a budget-busting $2.5 billion, Curiosity is the priciest gamble yet, which scientists hope will pay off with a bonanza of discoveries and pave the way for astronaut landings.
"The wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars," said NASA chief Charles Bolden.
President Barack Obama lauded the landing in a statement, calling it "an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future."
Over the next two years, Curiosity will drive over to a mountain rising from the crater floor, poke into rocks and scoop up rust-tinted soil to see if the region ever had the right environment for microscopic organisms to thrive. It's the latest chapter in the long-running quest to find out whether primitive life arose early in the planet's history.
The voyage to Mars took more than eight months and spanned 352 million miles.
NASA's last Mars rovers, twins Spirit and Opportunity, weighed much less and were easier to land back in 2004, cocooned in air bags. Read More at Yahoo News
