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August 24, 2012 | 6
Shortly after NASA's Curiosity rover touched down on Mars, the robot poked its head up and started taking a look around.
The rover snapped the pictures in the above mosaic on August 8, just days after Curiosity arrived on the Red Planet, using its stereo navigation cameras (Navcam) atop the rover's necklike mast. Photographer, writer and chemist Ken Kremer and photographer and educator Marco Di Lorenzo stitched the photographs together into a composite. The central gap in the mosaic arises from the use of left- and right-eye Navcam images. Kremer and Di Lorenzo also colorized the mosaic—Navcam photos are monochrome—to try to match the look of the terrain as captured by Curiosity's color Mast Camera (Mastcam).
The rover's tilted, finned power plant—a plutonium-fuel source that generates electricity through the heat of radioactive decay—is visible to the right. The vertical cylinder above houses the rover's UHF antenna. In the background is the rising rim of Gale Crater, the 150-kilometer-wide basin that Curiosity will explore during its roughly two-year mission.
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6 Comments
Add CommentWhen will the public be able to experience these "stereo navigation cameras" 3D pictures? All the talk (left-and-right-eye Navcam) images suggest this is indeed intended. I think with today's 3D televisions this would be mind blowing - like being there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the background in gale crater, surface appears quite smooth plain with granular soil and small gravels scattered around as on earth. Does this indicates some similarity with earth surface in terms of composition and structure? It appears that surface might have been washed by some water stream in past which might have led to the formation of granular soil and gravels
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe geology community is a little disappointed to date. It appears we've landed in an area of basaltic formations. Ugh! Fingers crossed that we'll drive out of this but very doubtful given the limited range of exploration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are basaltic formations a disappointment? Please explain, for people like me who don't know geology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoes your basaltic formation pessimism extend to the entire Gale crater? In a month or so we'll reach a spot dubbed Glenelg, where three different types of terrain meet, and in a year we'll climb Aeolis Mons, AKA Mount Sharp. Do you expect it all to be basaltic formations and disappointing?
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16065
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16068.html
cbung, keep in mind that expensive 3D TV or computer equipment wouldn't be needed to see in 3D. We could have split-screens. If views from left and right cameras were reversed (and carefully alligned, you could see them in 3-D just by looking cross-eyed, if you don't mind looking silly. Without reversing, you'd need a viewer using mirrors. Why this is never done today, I don't know.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf I didn't have 10,000 Mars photos in my Folders, I'd think that planet was desolate and unpopulated which of course it is not.
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