Images from the latest Mars rover’s navigation cameras reveal a
remarkably familiar landscape -- one that looks like the California desert.
Black-and-white photos stitched together from the
Curiosity rover’s Navcams show gravelly terrain with what looks like well-cut,
pyramidal mountains in the background – the kind of terrain found in the
Mojave, said John Grotzinger, lead scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory
mission.
The familiar ground “kind of makes you feel at
home,” Grotzinger said at a Wednesday news conference.
Curiosity’s ultimate goal is Mt. Sharp, a mountain
several miles away in the middle of Gale Crater. But the rover's landing spot near the edge of
the crater has proved to be interesting in its own right. Scientists have
picked up evidence of an alluvial fan – a water-caused feature found on hill
slopes on Earth.
“You would really be forgiven for thinking that NASA was trying to
pull a fast one on you, and we actually put a rover out in the Mojave Desert
and took a picture – a little L.A. smog coming in there,” Grotzinger joked.
Recent discoveries were filled with other pleasant
surprises. Mike Malin, lead scientist for the rover's MARDI descent imager,
revealed a new, higher-resolution shot of the heat shield in midflight – in
shining detail showcasing the stitching in the shield’s thermal
blanket and drawing gasps from Wednesday's audience.
“You’ve been hearing us saying, ‘Just wait till you see the good
stuff.’ Well, this is the good stuff,” Malin said.
Malin, who also works on the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter, pointed out a colleague’s find from the satellite: Six dark spots
showing the final resting place of the rover spacecraft’s half-dozen, 55-pound
tungsten slugs jettisoned before its supersonic parachute deployed.
Finding the slugs will help scientists better
understand how inert objects fall, Malin said.
The rover won’t be taking off for Mt. Sharp for a
few days yet; in the meantime, scientists are keeping an open mind about the
landing spot.
When Grotzinger was asked if there was possibly
gypsum in the shown image – a sign that water had been present – the Caltech
geologist said, “Sure, why not? ... That’s an entirely reasonable suggestion.”
The scientists hope to release color images from
the Mast Camera over the coming days.
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