ESA Rosetta Mission: Philae Landing on Comet 67/P 'all a blur'

The CIVA image from ESA Rosetta's Philae Lander is all blurred because the lander is bouncing away from the surface of the comet.

Credit: ESA

An image has been released that shows the hairy moment that the Philae comet lander bounced back into space.

The little robot touched down on 4km-wide 67P in November - but not before rebounding twice.

The new picture is a big blur, which is not surprising given that the lander was far from static.

It was acquired by Philae's CIVA camera system, which was primed to start shooting the moment the robot settled on to the surface.

Sharp images of the comet's terrain were eventually taken, but by then the robot had shot 1km across the surface and into a dark "ditch".

The shadowed hole limited the amount of sunlight reaching Philae's power generator, restricting its ability to charge its batteries.

The probe now lies dormant, waiting for better lighting conditions, which could arrive in the next few weeks as the comet moves into the inner-Solar System.

An update on the mission was given here at the American Geophysical Union's Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

Philae co-principal investigator Jean-Pierre Bibring also showed some reprocessed imagery taken by CIVA camera when Philae had finally come to a stop.

These pictures have been shown before, but the manipulation undertaken by scientists has revealed some new details.

In one, which Prof Bibring dubbed "Perihelion Cliff", it is possible to see glare marks. The Frenchman said these were reflections from the lander.

The glare is probably the reflection of the Philae lander itself.

Credit: ESA

Philae managed to despatch a good deal of science data from the surface before going into hibernation.

This information was successfully passed by the orbiting mothership, Rosetta, to Earth - and scientists continue to make their interpretations.

Meanwhile, the hunt goes on for Philae. Its precise location on the surface of 67P is unknown.

Rosetta took a series of pictures of the comet's surface on 12, 13 and 14 December. When these pictures are downlinked to Earth, researchers are hopeful they will find their lost probe.

Understanding precisely where Philae is on the comet will help engineers understand its predicament and the likely time of an awakening.

Part of this work is already under way using the limited number of pictures sent back from CIVA.

A preliminary model of the final landing location and its difficult terrain has been constructed.

Philae Lander's CIVA camera images have been used to construct a model of the final landing location.

Credit: ESA

SpaceX to attempt Falcon 9 Rocket landing on Floating Ocean Platform

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, complete with "hypersonic grid fins," that SpaceX will attempt to land on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean as part of a Dec. 16, 2014 launch.

Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX

SpaceX will apparently attempt something truly epic during next week's cargo launch to the International Space Station.

During the Dec. 16 launch from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which will send SpaceX's robotic Dragon capsule toward the orbiting lab, the California-based company will try to bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back to Earth for a controlled landing on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

The bold maneuver marks a big step forward in SpaceX's development of reusable-rocket technology, which the company's billionaire founder, Elon Musk, says could eventually cut the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100 and perhaps make Mars colonization economically feasible.

A photo of the "autonomous spaceport drone ship" on which SpaceX will attempt to land the Falcon 9 rocket.

Credit: Elon Musk/SpaceX

Musk shared photos of the Falcon 9 and landing platform via Twitter late last month, ratcheting up interest in the cargo mission, the fifth of 12 unmanned resupply flights SpaceX will make to the space station for NASA under a $1.6 billion contract.

"Autonomous spaceport drone ship. Thrusters repurposed from deep sea oil rigs hold position within 3m even in a storm," Musk tweeted about the platform on Nov. 22.

"Base is 300 ft by 100 ft, with wings that extend width to 170 ft. Will allow refuel & rocket flyback in future," he added in another tweet.


The Falcon 9 photo revealed that the rocket is outfitted with "hypersonic grid fins" to increase stability during a return to Earth.

"Grid fins are stowed on ascent and then deploy on reentry for 'x-wing' style control," Musk tweeted on Nov. 22. "Each fin moves independently for pitch/yaw/roll."

At a conference at MIT in October, Musk said that SpaceX would attempt to land the Falcon 9 first stage on the floating platform during the rocket's next flight.

The next liftoff on the rocket's schedule is the Dec. 16 Dragon launch.

ESA Rosetta mission: Philae lander OSIRIS NAC Camera captures landing data

This collection of images was acquired when Rosetta was about 15km above the surface of 67P

High-resolution pictures have now been released of the Philae probe in the act of landing on Comet 67P last Wednesday.

They were acquired by the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) on the Rosetta satellite, which had dropped the little robot towards the surface of the "ice mountain".

The images are presented as a mosaic covering the half-hour or so around the "first touchdown," the probe then bounced to a stop about 1km away.

Philae lost battery power on Saturday and is no longer talking with Earth.

Scientists still have not located the craft's current resting spot.

But European Space Agency (ESA) controllers have not given up hope of hearing from the plucky robot again, if it can somehow get enough light on to its solar panels to recharge its systems.

Getting a precise fix on its location, to then photograph its present predicament would provide a better idea of whether this is likely to happen.

The new NAC images will certainly help in this respect because they show the direction the lander took as it bounced away.

At the weekend, ESA presented some fascinating views of the first touchdown taken by Rosetta's navigation cameras, but the OSIRIS NAC system has substantially better resolution.

It's a trap
The new mosaic is produced by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, which operates Osiris.

It details Philae's descent, and the impact mark it leaves on 67P's surface. You then see the 100kg probe heading away on its initial bounce.

NB: All times are in GMT on Wednesday. The resolution is 28 cm/pixel.

This rebound reached hundreds of metres above the comet and lasted almost two hours.

When Philae came back down, it made another small leap, which took it into a high-walled trap.

Telemetry and pictures from the robot itself indicate this location is covered in deep shadow for most of 67P's day.

As a consequence, Philae receives insufficient solar power to re-boot and form a radio link to the orbiting Rosetta spacecraft.

ESA cannot be sure the robot will ever come back to life, but even if it does not the agency says it is "hugely happy" with what was achieved in the more than 50 hours following landing.

The probe managed to complete over 80% of its planned primary science campaign on the surface.

MUPUS

'Rock' hard
This data was pulled off the robot just before its sagging energy reserves dropped it into sleep mode.

Little of the results have so far been released by the various instrument teams. The one major exception is MUPUS.

This sensor package from DLR the German space agency's Institute for Planetary Research deployed a thermometer on the end of a hammer.

It retrieved a number of temperature profiles but broke as it tried to burrow its way into the comet's subsurface.

Scientists say this shows the icy material underlying 67P's dust covering to be far harder than anyone anticipated - having the tensile strength of some rocks.

It also helps explain why Philae bounced so high on that first touchdown.

The 4km-wide comet has little gravity, so when key landing systems designed to hold the robot down failed at the crucial moment, the probe would have been relying on thick, soft, compressive layers to absorb its impact.

However much dust it did encounter at that moment, it clearly was not enough to prevent Philae making its giant rebound.

ESA Rosetta Philae completes science mission before shutdown

Philae's first touchdown seen by Rosetta's NavCam

Rosetta’s lander has completed its primary science mission after nearly 57 hours on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

After being out of communication visibility with the lander since 09:58 GMT / 10:58 CET on Friday, Rosetta regained contact with Philae at 22:19 GMT /23:19 CET last night.

The signal was initially intermittent, but quickly stabilised and remained very good until 00:36 GMT / 01:36 CET this morning.

In that time, the lander returned all of its housekeeping data, as well as science data from the targeted instruments, including ROLIS, COSAC, Ptolemy, SD2 and CONSERT.

This completed the measurements planned for the final block of experiments on the surface.

ESA Rosetta Philae Lander may have bounced on landing

Philae may have landed not once but twice, that’s the final message from Esa this evening.

According to Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander Manager, DLR, the lander team believe that Philae may have bounced from the surface and settled again in a slightly different place.

Engineers know that the anchoring harpoons did not fire. It is also known that the communications link to Rosetta failed intermittently in an irregular pattern shortly after the landing but always immediately re-established itself.

However, science data has been received and is currently being processed, but the promised first panorama from the surface has not been released.

Rosetta is now out of touch with Philae as the orbiter has dipped below the horizon of the comet. The link to Philae was lost a little earlier than expected but this is probably because a hill or boulder was in the way of the line of sight.

Right now, Philae should be working through its first automatic sequence of science experiments. Contact will be re-established through Rosetta later tonight, and the data downlinked.

There will also be more telemetry to assist the engineers in understanding the exact sequence of events during the landing.

We will know more tomorrow.

Space Geckos Die Due to Technical Glitch Two Days Before Landing

The five geckos onboard Russia's Foton-M4 satellite died simultaneously two days before landing because of a technical malfunction, the head of the experiment, Sergei Savelyev, told RIA Novosti Tuesday.

"The autopsy revealed that the deaths were caused by technical issues and are related to the malfunction of one of the biosatellite's systems," said Savelyev, researcher at the Institute of Human Morphology and head of the experiment.

"Autopsies of three of the five [geckos] have been conducted, and the remaining two will be examined today. We can already confidently conclude that the death of all geckos happened almost simultaneously.

"The poor guys died within a few hours. Their bodies were not mummified, as some have reported. Moreover, their organs show that the death occurred no more than two days ago," Savelyev explained.

Savelyev denied reports saying the geckos died from hypothermia, as the lizards were unlikely to have had a lengthy cool-down.

"There was apparently a quick and short synchronous effect on all animals... Some technical glitch in the life-support system," he said, stressing that it was necessary to collect and examine the satellite's data in order to determine the exact problem.

Russian Foton M4 spacecapsule after landing.

Russia's Space Geckos Found Dead After Landing

Russia's Foton M4 satellite landed back on Earth on Sept. 1, 2014 after a 1.5-month trip into space to study the mating habits of geckos and other experiments. The geckos did not survive.

Credit: Roscosmos

A group of geckos sent to space so that scientists could study the mating habits of lizards in weightlessness have died.

Scientist discovered that the small reptiles didn't survive their outer space trek after the Russian satellite housing them landed back on Earth this weekend.

Researchers still aren't sure when or how the intrepid space geckos died, according to a statement released by Roscosmos, Russia's space agency, on Monday (Sept. 1).

Although the five geckos didn't survive the trip, the Foton spacecraft kept a group of flies alive for the duration of the 1.5-month space journey.

One of the geckos blasted into space onboard the Foton M4 satellite.

Credit: Roscosmos

"After extraction of biological objects from the lander to carry out the initial evaluation, it was found that the fly Drosophila moved spaceflight well, successfully developed and bred," according to a translated version of the Roscosmos statement.

The Foton carrying the geckos, and other experiments, launched to space on July 18. Shortly after the satellite made it to orbit, officials found that the craft wasn't responding to commands from the ground. Mission controllers re-established contact with the animal-filled spacecraft a few days after losing touch with it.

The interior of the Foton M4 spacecraft back on Earth. 

The satellite housed a group of five geckos that died at some point during the space trip. 

Credit: Roscosmos

The geckos got a lot of attention during their time in orbit. Comedian John Oliver even launched a "#GoGetThoseGeckos" campaign on his show "Last Week Tonight" to stage a rescue for the lizards.

"Star Trek's" Sir Patrick Stewart, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and other famous stars lent their support to the mock campaign as well.

"Maybe, just maybe, if we could come together and accomplish one thing as a civilization, we could then build on that progress," Oliver said during a broadcast in July.

"And I think rescuing these space sex geckos might just be that thing. And that is why, I'm issuing a challenge to humanity: Go get those geckos."

This wasn't the first experiment launched to study animal sex in space. Scientists have sent frogs, mice and salamanders into orbit to learn more about sex in weightlessness. In 1994, Japanese killifish became the first vertebrates to reproduce in outer space.

NASA Mars Curiosity Rover: Leaving Landing 'Safe Zone'

This image taken on June 27, 2014 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on the rover's landing-ellipse boundary, which is superimposed on the image. 

The ellipse measures approximately 4 miles wide by 12 miles long.

Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Univ. of Arizona

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has entered a new realm on the Red Planet.

The 1-ton Curiosity rover has now cruised out of its landing ellipse, the area, about 4 miles wide by 12 miles long (7 by 20 kilometers), regarded as safe ground for its August 2012 touchdown within Mars' huge Gale Crater, NASA officials said.

Indeed, a photo taken by the space agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on June 27 shows Curiosity right on this boundary, which encloses a region of relatively flat and smooth terrain.



Curiosity landed with the aid of a rocket-powered sky crane, which lowered the six-wheeled robot down softly on cables before flying off to crash-land intentionally a safe distance away.

This system, which had never been used before at Mars, allowed Curiosity to land with much more precision than previous Red Planet missions had been able to achieve.

For example, NASA's twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed inside an ellipse measuring 93 miles by 12 miles (150 by 20 km) in January 2004, and the ellipse for the agency's two Viking landers, which touched down on Mars in 1976, spanned 174 miles by 62 miles (280 by 100 km).

Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission, officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), seeks to determine if Mars has ever been capable of supporting microbial life.

The rover team has already achieved this goal, announcing last year that an area near Curiosity's landing site called Yellowknife Bay was a habitable lake-and-stream system billions of years ago.

ARCA: Air Strato Electric UAV completes rough landing tests

On February 13, 2014, Air Strato, electrical powered unmanned aerial vehicle performed the first take-off from rough, frozen ground.

The aircraft performed a short flight at 25 m altitude and then landed.

Air Strato was powered by four electrical engines. Two supplementary electric motors (engines) were added to boost power and shorten the take-off distance.

Additional suspension strengthening was installed on the wings and forward landing gear.

Despite this addition, the right landing gear suspension sustained some damage at touch down.

"The aircraft had only 10 percent of the batteries intended for the commercial version so we had to add ballast to simulate take-off weight."

"We also added two more electrical motors to increase thrust, needed on the rough ground to decrease take-off distance that, combined with the landing gear suspension, provided for a smooth taxi and take-off on rough terrain."

"It took less than 30 m to lift into the air at maximum thrust. Also we were impressed by the aircraft's rate of climb." - Teodor Diaconu, ARCA flight dynamics engineer.

Air Strato is a high altitude electrical powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It can reach altitudes of above 18 km and has an autonomy of 7 hours on internal batteries and 3 days using solar panels.

It can carry a variable payload up to 30 kg consisting of surveillance equipment or other scientific instruments.

ESA Video: Soyuz undocking, reentry and landing explained

How does an astronaut return to Earth from the International Space Station? What does it feel like to re-enter the atmosphere? How does the Soyuz capsule function? Watch and find out. 

This video is based on an actual lesson delivered to the ESA astronaut class of 2009 (also known as the #Shenanigans09) during their ESA Basic Training. 

It features interviews with astronauts who have flown on the Soyuz and dramatic footage of actual landings.

Produced by the ESA Human Spaceflight and Operations (HSO) Astronaut Training Division, Cologne, Germany, in collaboration with the HSO Strategic Planning and Outreach Office, Noordwijk, The Netherlands, with special support from Roskosmos.

ESA: Philae probe landing on 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet next autumn

Touch down: This is what it could look like when the three-legged Philae lander touches down on the surface of the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet in November. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

In the coming autumn, the Philae probe is expected land on the nucleus of the 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet, which is a mere four kilometres in diameter.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research want to analyse the primeval building materials of the planets on site for the first time.

The list of celestial bodies that have already welcomed messengers from Earth is short. Our Moon is at the top as the place of the first manned landing.

Then come Venus and Mars and Europeans shouldn't forget Saturn's moon Titan, on whose exotic surface an ESA probe landed some time ago. Finally, there are the two planetoids Eros and Itokawa. That's it.

If everything goes according to plan this November, however, European space travel could again make history: the European Rosetta mission includes the landing on the nucleus of a comet.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau are playing a decisive role in the distant on-site inspection.

Philae, the lander, weighs around 100 kilogrammes and is the spacecraft intended to successfully perform this daring feat on 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Hermann Böhnhardt

"We'll not only be exploring the comet for several months from an orbit, we want ground truth," says Hermann Böhnhardt.

Used here, ground truth means, in specialist terms: The observations of the Rosetta orbiter as it flies by are to be confirmed by measurements on the surface.

Max Planck researcher Böhnhardt is Rosetta's project scientist for the Philae lander.

The combination of these two probes makes it possible to carry out unique experiments, such as CONSERT (COmet Nucleus Sounding Experiment by Radiowave Transmission).

Its methodology is similar to a tomography examination, although the patient in this case is a comet's nucleus.

And this is how it's done: Rosetta emits radio waves, which penetrate the comet nucleus and reach Philae on the other side of the nucleus. Philae immediately returns the radio waves with its aerial.

What is the aim of this radio wave ping-pong? As it travels through the celestial body, the signal changes and thus enables conclusions to be drawn about the interior.

"The inner structure of a comet is still largely unknown," explains Böhnhardt. "We want to know for example whether it is more a loose accumulation of snow or mainly solid components."

An important aspect is whether there are larger voids or layers on the nucleus. "Better data on the structure of the comet will help us to understand the exact formation process of the large bodies in the solar system, the planets," explains Hermann Böhnhardt.

These accrete from smaller bodies in a multi-stage process according to the topical theories.

Asiana Boeing 777: Plane Crashes on Landing in San Francisco

An Asiana jetliner from Seoul, South Korea, crashed while landing Saturday at San Francisco International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. 

The airplane broke into pieces as it careened down the runway.

The jetliner, Flight 214 from Seoul’s Incheon airport, carried 291 passengers and 16 crew members, the airline said.

It is unclear how many on board may have been injured or if any were killed, though many passengers were seen scrambling down inflated escape chutes. The crash was the first in the United States since February 2009.

Smoke billowed out of holes in the fuselage of the Boeing 777 as firefighters rushed to the wreckage on the runway. Aircraft parts were scattered across the tarmac — the plane’s wheels, tail and one engines were ripped off.

“I looked up out the window and saw the plane coming in extremely fast and incredibly heavy,” said Isabella Lacaze, 18, from Fort Worth, Texas, who witnessed the crash from the San Francisco Airport Marriott Waterfront.

“It came in at a 30 or 45 degree angle and the tail was way, way lower than the nose,” said another witness, Stefanie Turner, 32, from Arizona.

The plane clipped something as it touched down near the sea wall, Ms. Lacaze said. “And then it hit one of the planes that was already on the runway.”

The plane that was hit said United on its side, she said, but did not appear to sustain much damage.

Other witnesses were unsure whether the Asiana plane hit another aircraft.

“I remember watching the nose go to the ground and the tail way up in the air and then the tail back to ground hard,” she said, describing the plane careening out of control. At that point the tail snapped off and the rest of the plane skidded down the runway.

“The smoke was not bad at all at first,” she said. “It was like one cloud. It took maybe a minute or two for the chutes to come out of the side,” she said and people began to pour out almost immediately.

David Eun, who said in a Twitter message that he had been a passenger on the plane, posted a picture of a downed Asiana jetliner from ground level, which showed some passengers walking away from the aircraft.

An aviation official, who did not want to be identified, said the plane was not making an emergency landing, and that the situation had been entirely routine until the crash. The cause was unclear.

Arnold Reiner, a retired airline captain and the former director of flight safety at Pan Am, said that it appeared from television images that the airplane had touched down far earlier than the normal landing point, which is about 1,000 feet down the runway. And that runway, 28 Left, has a “displaced threshold,” he said, meaning that the runway’s usable area does not begin at the start of the pavement. The Instrument Landing System would normally guide the pilot to the proper touchdown point, but in clear weather, pilots will sometimes fly a visual approach.

If the plane touched down too soon, before the paved area or before the area intended for landings, it may have torn off its landing gear, he said, and begin to skid along on its engine cowlings. “At that point, all bets are off,'’ he said, and the tail may have hit the ground with more force than the fuselage was intended to handle.

One question for investigators, Mr. Reiner said, is who was at the controls. The 777 has a two-pilot cockpit but on a flight that long, there is typically a “relief pilot” or two on board, so no one has to work continuously for the entire flight.

Steven B. Wallace, who was the director of the office of accident investigation at the F.A.A. from 2000 to 2008, that “it seems clear that the airplane hit short of the runway.”

“Why that happened, I don’t know,” he said. Mr. Wallace, who is a licensed commercial pilot, said the pilot could have made a mistake and come in too low or there could have been wind shear.

Even though the runway stretches to the sea wall, planes normally would not touch down until they had passed gold markings a safe distance down the runway. But the videos show significant debris between the markings and the sea wall, he said.

Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft is captured landing with Expedition 35 crew on board

The Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft is seen as it lands with Expedition 35 crew.

On board was Commander Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn and Russian Flight Engineer Roman Romanenko of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). 

The module landed safely in a remote area near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, on Tuesday, May 14, 2013. 

Hadfield, Marshburn and Romanenko returned from five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 34 and 35 crews.

Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

NASA MARS: Landing Astronauts Safely remains the key problem

An art installation titled "Landing Excursion Module (LEM)," part of "SPACE PROGRAM: MARS" by artist Tom Sachs at the Park Avenue Armory May 16, 2012 in New York. 

Landing astronauts safely on Mars is one of the biggest technological hurdles for any future manned mission to the Red Planet, even more complicated than last year's daring rover touchdown.

Landing astronauts safely on Mars is one of the biggest technological hurdles for any future manned mission to the Red Planet, even more complicated than last year's daring rover touchdown.

NASA dazzled observers by landing the one-ton Curiosity rover on Mars in August in a high-speed operation using a sky crane and supersonic parachute, but experts say the task would be even more challenging with humans onboard.

Robert Braun

"The Curiosity landing was an amazing accomplishment," said Robert Braun  a former NASA engineer now at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"But it's really a baby step that we needed to take, on the way of one day walking on the Mars surface," he said at a conference in Washington on Tuesday. "

"The three-day meeting, which started Monday, has brought together NASA experts, university researchers and members of the aerospace industry for talks focused on exploring the neighbouring planet."

"Curiosity has been described as a small car," Braun said of the six-wheeled mobile lab that has been exploring Mars for the last nine months.

"What we are really talking about today is landing a two-storey house, and maybe landing that two-storey house next to another one that has been pre-positioned," he said.

Where Curiosity weighed one ton, engineers estimate a supply capsule to prepare for a manned landing would weigh somewhere around 40 tons.

Such a mission would require not only food, water and oxygen for the astronauts, but a vehicle powerful enough to get them back to their spaceship, which would likely remain in orbit.

Expedition 34 Crew: Welcome Home!

Expedition 34 Flight Engineer Evgeny Tarelkin, left with flowers, Flight Commander Kevin Ford of NASA, center with flowers, and Soyuz Commander Oleg Novitskiy are greeted at the Kustanay Airport a few hours after they landed near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan.

Ford, Novitskiy, and Tarelkin are returning from 142 days onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 33 and 34 crews.

Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

ESA Cassini Huygens: Titan Descent Movie (2005.01.14) - YouTube

This movie was built thanks to the data collected by ESA's Huygens Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) on 14 January 2005, during the 147-minutes plunge through Titan's thick orange-brown atmosphere to a soft sandy riverbed.

In 4 minutes 40 seconds, the movie shows what the probe 'saw' within the few hours of the descent and the eventual landing.

At first the Huygens camera just saw haze over the distant surface. The haze started to clear only at about 60 kilometers altitude, making it possible to resolve surface features as large as 100 meters.

Only after landing could the probe's camera resolve little grains of sand millions and millions times smaller than Titan. The movie provides a glimpse on such a huge change of scale.

Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Source: jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08118

NASA Mars: Rover Curiosity's Heat Shield in View

This colour thumbnail image was obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover during its descent to the surface of Mars on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT).

The image was obtained by the Mars Descent Imager instrument known as MARDI and shows the 15-foot (4.5-meter) diameter heat shield when it was about 50 feet (16 meters) from the spacecraft.

It was obtained two and one-half minutes before touching down on the surface of Mars and about three seconds after heat shield separation.

It is among the first color images Curiosity sent back from Mars.

The resolution of all of the MARDI frames is reduced by a factor of eight in order for them to be promptly received on Earth during this early phase of the mission.

Full resolution (1,600 by 1,200 pixel) images will be returned to Earth over the next several months as Curiosity begins its scientific exploration of Mars.

The original image from MARDI has been geometrically corrected to look flat.

Curiosity landed inside of a crater known as Gale Crater.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

NASA MSL Curiosity Video "Seven Minutes of Terror" - Video

NASA MSL Mission Update

Today, Curiosity's two lithium ion rechargeable batteries are being recharged to 100 percent of capacity in preparation for entry, descent and landing.

The batteries, which have been maintained at a 70-percent state of charge during the cruise to Mars, are being recharged using power from Mars Science Laboratory's cruise-stage solar array.

The batteries enable Curiosity's power subsystem to meet peak power demands of rover activities when the demand temporarily exceeds the onboard multi-mission radioisotope thermoelectric generator (MMRTG) steady output level.

With a capacity of about 42 amp-hours each, the batteries are expected to go through multiple charge-discharge cycles per Martian day.

More NASA MSL Image Galleries

Briefing Images
› View gallery

Artist's Concepts
› View gallery

Prelaunch Images
› View gallery

NASA Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank's safe Return

Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank smiles as he rests outside the Soyuz TMA-02M Capsule just minutes after he and Expedition 30 Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin landed in a remote area outside of the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, on Friday, April 27, 2012.

NASA Astronaut Burbank, Russian Cosmonauts Shkaplerov and Ivanishin are returning from more than five months onboard the International Space Station where they served as members of the Expedition 29 and 30 crews.

image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi 

ESA Huygens lander, full size replica, London Science Museum

ESA's Saturn Huygens lander, full size replica, London Science Museum.