NASA shows first ‘crime scene’ photo of Mars landing

The touchdown involved dropping a robotic vehicle on the surface of the Red Planet:

US: About 36 hours after the US space agency's landed its $2.5 billion rover on Mars, NASA released Tuesday what it called a “crime scene” aerial shot of where the parachute, heat shield and rover came down.

The touchdown on August 6 of the Mars Science Laboratory involved the most elaborate attempt yet to drop a robotic vehicle on the surface of the Red Planet, and required a heat shield, supersonic parachute and rocket-powered sky crane.

The process, known as entry, descent and landing, or EDL, was referred to as “Seven Minutes of Terror” by NASA, but went off without a hitch, in what President Barack Obama called an “unprecedented feat of technology.” On approach, a heat shield protected the Curiosity rover's fiery entry into Mars' atmosphere, a parachute deployed to slow it down, and the spacecraft backshell separated.

Then, a rocket powered backpack was fired to power the one-ton rover downward before it was lowered by nylon tethers. The sky crane was designed to detach and fly away to crash somewhere to the north.

The latest black and white picture released Tuesday was taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter about 300 kilometers (185 miles) overhead.

It shows the Mars Science Laboratory rover, nicknamed Curiosity, with the now defunct sky crane about 650 meters (yards) away to the northwest. The parachute and backshell of the spacecraft that separated before it lowered down landed about 615 meters away from the rover to the southwest.

The heat shield appears to be about 1,200 meters from the rover to the southeast.

AFP