Mars ‘Curiosity’ Rover Sends Back First Landing Video

On Monday afternoon the NASA Mars rover known as Curiosity made its decent to Mars and the entire event was captured via hundreds of snapshots. Described as “seven minutes of terror” the event included the Mars rover shedding its heat shield and ended with a big pile of dust being kicked up on the planets surface as Curiosity landed on the red planet.

While NASA will eventually release a high definition video of the landing for now they have chosen to show off a low-resolution landing that was created by stringing 297 images together from the rovers decent via the Mars Descent Imager.

The images you are about to witness include the final two and a half minutes of the rovers decent into the Martian crater.

While this particular video is amateurish at best the Curiosity rover has already begun to send back high-resolution photos (pictured above) of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-high mountain at the center of the crater and the location of NASA’s main study point.

What NASA has learned so far is that Curiosity landed in an excellent spot and will be able to travel with relative ease in any direction it so chooses.

Here’s a quick look at the Mars rovers final moments of descent:

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According NPR‘s Joe Palca the NASA team is working on a 24 hour, 39 minute long day to keep up with Martian time, a fact that has left many workers with a case of “non-stop jetlag.”

Will you be following the Mars Rovers progress moving forward?