Digital Media Center
Bryant-Denny Stadium, Gate 61
920 Paul Bryant Drive
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0370
(800) 654-4262

© 2024 Alabama Public Radio
Donate/Portal
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

From Curiosity, Another Martian Landscape

By Eyder Peralta
Published August 13, 2012 at 4:26 PM CDT
This image of the crater wall is north of the landing site, or behind the rover. Here, a network of valleys believed to have formed by water erosion enters Gale Crater from the outside. This is the first view scientists have had of a fluvial system - one relating to a river or stream — from the surface of Mars.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
This image of the crater wall is north of the landing site, or behind the rover. Here, a network of valleys believed to have formed by water erosion enters Gale Crater from the outside. This is the first view scientists have had of a fluvial system - one relating to a river or stream — from the surface of Mars.

NASA has released two more pictures from the Curiosity Mars rover.

One is a color image that shows that wall of the Gale Crater and the other is a close up shot of the area excavated by the rover's descent stage rocket engines.

We've posted the white-balanced version of the photos. In theory those should appear more like what Mars would look like if you were using your eyes.

With the loose debris blasted away by the rockets, details of the underlying materials are clearly seen. Shown in the inset in the figure are pebbles up to 1.25 inches across (upper two arrows) and a larger clast 4 inches long protruding up by about 2 inches from the layer in which it is embedded.
/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
/
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
With the loose debris blasted away by the rockets, details of the underlying materials are clearly seen. Shown in the inset in the figure are pebbles up to 1.25 inches across (upper two arrows) and a larger clast 4 inches long protruding up by about 2 inches from the layer in which it is embedded.

Also of note: The Wall Street Journal has started stringing together a 360-degree view of the place where Curiosity landed. It's still incomplete, but the paper is adding photos as they come in.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta
Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.
See stories by Eyder Peralta
News from Alabama Public Radio is a public service in association with the University of Alabama. We depend on your help to keep our programming on the air and online. Please consider supporting the news you rely on with a donation today. Every contribution, no matter the size, propels our vital coverage. Thank you.
Donate