Aug 8, 2012

Dwayne Brown Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726 dwayne c brown@nasa gov

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

RELEASE: 12-273

FIRST 360-DEGREE PANORAMA FROM NASA'S CURIOSITY MARS ROVER

PASADENA, Calif -- Remarkable image sets from NASA's Curiosity rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) are continuing to develop the story of Curiosity's landing and first days on Mars

The images from Curiosity's just-activated navigation cameras, or Navcams, include the rover's first self-portrait, looking down at its deck from above Another Navcam image set, in lower-resolution thumbnails, is the first 360-degree view of Curiosity's new home in Gale Crater Also downlinked were two, higher-resolution Navcams providing the most detailed depiction to date of the surface adjacent to the rover

"These Navcam images indicate that our powered descent stage did more than give us a great ride, it gave our science team an amazing freebie," said John Grotzinger, project scientist for the mission from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena "The thrust from the rockets actually dug a one-and-a-half-foot-long [0 5 meter] trench in the surface It appears we can see Martian bedrock on the bottom Its depth below the surface is valuable data we can use going forward "

Another image set, courtesy of the Context Camera, or CTX, aboard NASA's MRO has pinpointed the final resting spots of the six, 55-pound (25-kilogram) entry ballast masses The tungsten masses impacted the Martian surface at a high speed of about 7 5 miles (12 kilometers) from Curiosity's landing location

Curiosity's latest images are available at:

http://1 usa gov/MfiyD0

Wednesday, the team deployed the 3 6 foot-tall (1 1-meter) camera mast, activated and gathered surface radiation data from the rover's Radiation Assessment Detector and concluded testing of the rover's high-gain antenna

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks' elemental composition from a distance, are the first of their kind on Mars Curiosity will use a drill and scoop, which are located at the end of its robotic arm, to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover's analytical laboratory instruments

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater's interior mountain Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history

MRO's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera is operated by the University of Arizona in Tucson The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp in Boulder, Colo The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Exploration Rover projects are managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the orbiter

For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit:

http://www nasa gov/mars

and

http://marsprogram jpl nasa gov/msl

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www facebook com/marscuriosity

and

http://www twitter com/marscuriosity

For more about NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, visit:

http://www nasa gov/mro

-end-

To subscribe to the list, send a message to: hqnews-subscribe@mediaservices nasa gov To remove your address from the list, send a message to: hqnews-unsubscribe@mediaservices nasa gov

The following information is a reminder of your current mailing list subscription:

You are subscribed to the following list: [list_name]

using the following email: example@example.com

You may automatically unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting the following URL:

https://aus-city com/cgi-bin/dada/mail cgi/u/NASA_REPORTS/example/example com/

If the above URL is inoperable, make sure that you have copied the entire address Some mail readers will wrap a long URL and thus break this automatic unsubscribe mechanism

You may also change your subscription by visiting this list's main screen:

<[program_url]/list/[list]>

If you're still having trouble, please contact the list owner at:

<mailto:[list_owner_email]>

The following physical address is associated with this mailing list:

[physical_address]