The Curiosity Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) captured the rover’s descent to the surface of the Red Planet. The instrument shot 4 fps video from heatshield separation to the ground. This stop-motion video shows 297 frames from the Mars Descent Imager aboard NASA’s Curiosity rover as it descended to the surface of Mars. These thumbnail images were received on Earth on Aug. 6, 2012, and cover the last two and a half minutes of descent.
Visible in the timelapse is the heatshield discarded by the vehicle as it neared the ground. So too is the dust kicked up by the rover’s rocket-powered crane.
Pictures from the Mars Descent Imager, even in their thumbnail form (above), have now allowed engineers to work out Curiosity’s precise position on the planet – a latitude of -4.5895 degrees and a longitude of 137.4417 degrees.
The full set of high-resolution pictures from MARDI will take some weeks to downlink.
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Filed under: Mars
