Touchdown! First images from Curiosity on Mars

Kelly Oakes, contributor

(Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A few rocks on the ground and a flash of wheel: it may not look like much, but this is one of the first images taken by the Curiosity rover soon after it landed on Mars. Curiosity touched down safely on the Red Planet early this morning after an eight-month journey from Earth and a 7-minute descent through the Martian atmosphere.

The photograph was taken using a fisheye wide-angle lens on one of Curiosity's hazard avoidance cameras, known as Hazcams, on the left rear side of the rover. There are eight Hazcams altogether on the front and back of the rover: each has a left and right "eye" taking black-and-white photos that can be merged to provide NASA engineers with three-dimensional information about Curiosity's surroundings.

In the top left of the photograph part of Curiosity's power supply is peeking into view, but most of the top of the image is burned out as the Hazcam is looking directly into the sun - although this does not damage it. Once NASA engineers have deemed it safe to deploy the rover's remote sensing mast and high-tech cameras, which could take a few days, Curiosity will begin to survey its surroundings in higher resolution.

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/2218dc47/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cshortsharpscience0C20A120C0A80Ctouchdown0Efirst0Eimages0Ecuriosity0Bhtml0DDCMP0FOTC0Erss0Gnsref0Fonline0Enews/story01.htm

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