Mars Curiosity Landing Site Photo, Taken from Orbit

Photo Shows Where Curiosity, Sky Crane, Parachute Ended Up

Here's an amazing photo of the Mars Curiosity rover landing site, in which you can also see where the parachute, backshell, heatshield, and Sky Crane landed. They all ended up fairly close together.

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The image comes to us via the HiRISE camera mounted on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image below is lower-res: you can get a much, much higher-resolution version via the link below.

• Mars Curiosity Landing Site Photo (.tif)

Those black marks aren't burns from the Sky Crane's jets, but darker soil kicked up by the Sky Crane's passing.

HiRISE has even more awesome photos, including the shot of the parachute descent of the Curiosity landing.

Photos

Mars Curiosity Rover Landing Site Photo

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uploaded by NowPublic Staff