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First images emerge of NASA Curiosity rover’s manoeuvres during ‘seven minutes of terror’

This August 6, 2012 NASA image shows Curiosity rover and its parachute, spotted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as Curiosity descended to the surface on August 5, PDT (Aug. 6 EDT). The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera captured this image of Curiosity while the orbiter was listening to transmissions from the rover. Curiosity and its parachute are in the center of the white box; the inset image is a cutout of the rover stretched to avoid saturation

NASA Curiosity rover manoeuvres during 'seven minutes of terror'

PASADENA, Calif. — The robotic explorer Curiosity’s daring plunge through the pink skies of Mars was more than perfect. It landed with spectacular style, said a NASA scientist who described the first images of its gymnastics through the so-called “seven minutes of terror.”

Hours after the U.S. space agency learned the rover had arrived on target late Sunday, engineers and scientists got the first glimpses of the intricate manoeuvres it made to hit the Martian soil safely.


Extraordinary efforts were needed for the landing because the rover weighs about one tonne, and the Martian atmosphere is very thin, not offering much friction to slow the spacecraft down.

The arrival was an engineering tour de force, debuting never-before-tried acrobatics as Curiosity sliced through the Martian atmosphere at 20,900 km/h.

More images, including video of the landing and beautiful colour shots of Mars, will follow in days to come. It will be weeks before Curiosity starts digging into the red planet’s past.

Cheers and applause echoed through the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory after signals from space indicated Curiosity had survived the plunge.


NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images

Minutes after the landing signal reached Earth, Curiosity beamed back the first black-and-white pictures from inside the crater showing its wheel and its shadow, cast by the afternoon sun.


It was NASA’s seventh landing on Earth’s neighbour; many attempts by the U.S. and other countries to zip past, circle or set down on Mars have gone awry.

In a Hollywood-style finish, cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground at a snail-paced 3.2 km/h. A video camera was set to capture the most dramatic moments.

JPL Director Charles Elachi compared the team to Olympic athletes.


Gilles Leclerc, director-general of space exploration at the Canadian Space Agency, said workers there were celebrating as well, having spent years working on a device aboard Curiosity that will help look for signs of life.

“Well, we’re Canadians, eh? So it was less enthusiastic but I would say it was as emotional as it was in the U.S. But there were cheers indeed and it was again a great moment.”

Still, he said from Longueuil, Que., there were some tense moments.

“The seven minutes of terror that we had been told to expect turned into a triumph in the end because it was a very daring landing technique and it was successful … so we were all very ecstatic.”


President Barack Obama called the landing “an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future.”


The voyage to Mars took more than eight months.







The landing site near Mars’ equator was picked because there are signs of past water everywhere, meeting one of the requirements for life as we know it.

Previous trips to Mars have uncovered ice near the Martian north pole and evidence that water once flowed when the planet was wetter and toastier, unlike today’s harsh, frigid desert environment.

Curiosity’s goal: to scour for basic ingredients essential for life including carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and oxygen. It’s not equipped to search for living or fossil microorganisms.


Despite Mars’ reputation as a spacecraft graveyard, humans continue their love affair with the planet, lobbing spacecraft in search of clues about its early history. Out of more than three dozen attempts _ flybys, orbiters and landings _ by the U.S., Soviet Union, Europe and Japan since the 1960s, more than half have ended disastrously.






NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images


NASA/JPL-Caltech via Getty Images




Launched on Nov. 26 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the robotic lab sailed through space for more than eight months, covering 566 million km, before piercing Mars’ thin atmosphere at 20,921 km per hour — 17 times the speed of sound — and starting its descent.








With a 14-minute delay in the time it takes for radio waves from Earth to reach Mars 248 million km away, NASA engineers had little to do during Curiosity’s descent but anxiously track its progress.

AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes




Curiosity is designed to spend the next two years exploring Gale Crater and an unusual (5 km-) high mountain consisting of what appears to be sediments rising from the crater’s floor.

Its primary mission is to look for evidence that Mars — the planet most similar to Earth — may have once hosted the basic building blocks necessary for microbial life to evolve.


One is a laser gun that can zap a rock from 7 meters away to create a spark whose spectral image is analyzed by a special telescope to discern the mineral’s chemical composition.



With Files from The Associated Press and Reuters

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