After its first day on Mars, NASA’s rover on 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 US$2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory and nuclear-powered robot Curiosity late on Sunday opened a new chapter in the history of interplanetary exploration by touching down on the red planet.
The 0.91 tonne 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.
Photo: EPA / NASA / JPL-Caltech / HANDOUT
Numerous images of the car-sized rover and its alien surroundings have come back to NASA since the landing occurred at 10:32 pm on Sunday on the US West Coast.
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.
“The spacecraft is oriented northwest-southeast, pointing forward toward Mount Sharp,” project scientist John Grotzinger said. “This couldn’t have been a better position to land in.”
However, Grotzinger said it might be a year before the rover arrives at the mountain in the center of the planet’s Gale Crater, as scientists first take a close look at soil and rock samples inside the crater.
“We would never want to just drive across the dunes as the shortest way to go there,” he said.
According to NASA chief engineer Miguel San Martin, the rover touched down inside the planned landing ellipse that spanned 20km by 6km at the foot of the mountain. Further data in the coming days will give scientists a better idea of exactly where the rover landed.
Initial checks on the instruments on board have also come back positive, NASA said.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS