New Images Show Mars Rover Curiosity's New Home in Gale Crater, and Its Mountain Destination

I have to say, I expected a lot more detail in the landing images/video we have so far. Go ahead, give me the hooting down I deserve (I read that it will take time to render more detail in the landing images), but for now, color me decidedly underwhelmed in light of all the HD imaging capability that is on board!

I can only dream of seeing these pictures in color! I'm so excited, the thought of a man-made object rolling around so many millions miles away is just overwhelming to me. And then we get to see these foreign landscapes that exist only on maps for us? I hope this project goes well and they collect tons of new data.

It's all a HOAX!!

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...just kidding. Great job NASA.

pioneer,

I hear you, but you just gotta be patient. the pictures we do have are taken from cameras used to help steer the rover, they are not designed to take pretty pictures. and even those cameras have better pictures, we can just only get very compressed versions right now due very limited bandwidth from relaying to a satellite that streaks across the sky above the rover for a couple minutes every so often. Most of that bandwidth time is being to verify god-only-knows what types of system checks, tests, etc, they should be deploying the high gain antenna very soon and then we will be able to communicate directly with the rover and turn on the fancy 3d high def cameras and download pretty pictures and video.

This photo was taken with the rover's weaker hazard cameras.

We haven't seen images from it's more powerful cameras...

This is so wonderful, cool and fantastic. This dune buggy is nuclear power. I say turn up the radio and on the camera and lets get exploring! YEA BABY! Woo Hoo! Lets climb some dunes and dig in the dirt and do some science!

I hope this Nuclear SUV Dune buggy has loud speakers on the outside. I want to wake up ALL those MARTIANS! LOL

GREAT JOB NASA!!!!

Robot you bring up an interesting idea, sort of. You mentioned having "Loud Speakers" on the outside, what I think might be more interesting is putting "Microphones" on the outside and allow us to hear what's out there as well as just viewing with cameras. At least I haven't heard of any microphones being placed on the rover. I'm sure the sounds might be different than what we might hear with our own ears due to a different density to Mar's atmosphere but I would still love to hear it.

First of all, Congratualtions!! There is a small percentage of people who really understand how important these missons are. The HD camera is excellent, which brings about this comment. Judging by the first pictures, I hope someone there realizes the smoothness and texture of the ground where Curiosity has landed. Just guessing here, but it sure looks like that area is really subjected to high winds quite often. You may want to get Curiosity out of there and to a safer spot to call home base for now. It may be the size of a small car, but I'm pretty sure those Mars winds could blow that thing around like a tinker toy. Hope I'm wrong. This should be the best rover landing expedition yet. Can't wait to see more. Good Luck team.

i believe the landing area is very smooth do to the radar on the rover doing an excellent job of finding a smooth spot to land on, i doubt the entire area around the rover is perfectly smooth (a bit of a guess here), opportunity and spirit haven't been turned over in 8 years so it seems unlikely curiosity will be overturned by winds, cheers

I read recently on another article, this unit is powered to run for 23 months. Let us hope there via great engineering it continues years into the future like the other roving robotic landers.

maybe I don't understand the power of this rover. I know it's nuclear powered, but are there no other backup systems like solar so it can continue to function after its primary power has depleted? I figure they want to keep this thing going as long as possible, and a max period of functionality seems a little short-sighted. Hopefully I'm wrong

cober319,
Curiosity has both nuclear and solar power. How much the solar power adds to the system, I do not know.

A good source to read.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory

And I suppose you can look up details from the NASA website too.

Since we have estabilished that we are 100% sure that water does exisist on Mars, did we decide to go to the Gale crater to look for the next big element in the building blocks of life, CARBON? Or have we already found carbon based materials on Mars?

Looking at the picture in this article from center then to the right side shadow, I feel the Curiosity is about to be attacked or closely observed by Praying Mathis Martian depicted by the above shadow.

Perhaps, if you look directly at the Martian, we can not see it with its stealth technology, but only shows up via the shadow by blocking the sun with its body.

I've been following this on the main NASA site and related nasa sites and now (8/9/12) they have some good pictures, some in HD. Also the NASA sites have said that there are no solar panels.
This site (PS) has good stuff for everyone, including those who don't follow subjects closely.