Video Shows Rover Heat Shield Hit Mars, Create Dust Cloud

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DC Agle / Guy Webster 818-393-9011 / 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
agle@jpl.nasa.gov / guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Video Feature Aug. 17, 2012

Video Shows Rover Heat Shield Impact Mars, Create Dust Cloud

A new NASA video, available at http://bit.ly/heatshield, shows the cloud of dust that rose from the surface of the Red Planet after the Curiosity rover's heat shield hit the Martian terrain during the spacecraft's descent on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The video was made using a sequence of 25 images taken by the Mars Descent Imager on Curiosity while the rover was still suspended on a parachute, after the spacecraft had jettisoned its heat shield.

A dark spot, the shadow of the heat shield, enters the scene from lower left, moving toward the center. The bright heat shield itself is also apparent just before the shadow and hardware meet in the impact on the surface. The area of ground visible in the images is about six-tenths of a mile (1 kilometer) across. The frames are cropped portions of full-frame images from the Mars Descent Imager.

Watch the full video, which shows the impact at various speeds, at http://bit.ly/heatshield.

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of Caltech. The Mars Descent Imager was provided by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego.

For more information about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl and http://www.nasa.gov/msl .

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