After its first day on Mars, NASA's rover Monday sent back to Earth stunning images of its crater landing site and the mountain it aims to climb in the hunt for signs of life.
The landing of the $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory and nuclear-powered robot Curiosity late Sunday opened a new chapter in the history of interplanetary exploration by touching down on the Red Planet.
The one-ton mobile lab is the largest rover ever sent to Mars, and its high-speed landing was the most daring to date, using a rocket-powered sky crane to lower the six-wheeled vehicle gently to the Martian surface.
Numerous images of the car-sized rover and its alien surroundings have come back to NASA since the landing occurred at 10:32 pm Sunday on the US West Coast (0532 GMT Monday).
New images of the rover's descent, taken from the vehicle itself, were shown on NASA television, strung together in a video that depicted the spacecraft's heat shield deploying and dust kicked up before the rover landed wheels down.
Other black and white images show the rover's shadow and Mount Sharp in the distance, a mountain it aims to conquer as part of its two-year mission to explore Mars and analyze sediment layers that are up to a billion years old.
The images so far tend to be small, but high-resolution images are expected in the next couple of weeks.
Keywords – NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity sends back stunning images, high resolution images expected in couple of weeks, sky crane to lower the six-wheeled vehicle gently to the Martian surface.
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