Mars Curiosity Beams First High-Res Pic

Curiosity's Surroundings - Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

In an almost giddy late-night press conference, the NASA Mars Science Laboratory team celebrated the Curiosity Rover's successful landing on a "nice, flat spot — beautiful, really beautiful" on Mars. It's a patch of dusty land that's since been immortalized in a couple of low-resolution thumbnails that arrived at mission control moments after Curiosity touched down. Now there's a new pic — and Curiosity's new home is coming into focus.

The image arrived early this morning, around the same time that the MSL team sat down for their first post-landing press conference. According to the web site, the image was captured with Curiosity's fish eye lens (part of a pair of lenses) and is actually half of its full resolution capabilities. The camera lens was protected by a dust cover during landing, which has since sprung open. "The cameras are looking directly into the sun, so the top of the image is saturated. Looking straight into the sun does not harm the cameras. The lines across the top are an artifact called 'blooming' that occurs in the camera's detector because of the saturation," said NASA.

The landing "looked extremely clean," said Dr. Adam Steltzner, Mechanical Systems Lead, who has been with the mission since its inception almost a decade ago. Steltzner's been mostly unknown to the public, but in recent days the scientist has been thrust into the spotlight. He joined Twitter less than a week ago and has been tweeting a mission play-by-play and amassing followers ever since. This was his last tweet before finally grabbing some shut-eye:

John Holdren, the President's science advisor and the director of Office of Science and Technology Policy, called the effort, "The most challenging mission ever attempted in the history of robotics space exploration."

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden cheered the Curiosity landing, explaining that "new technologies never invented or attempted before were created for this journey," and that the odds for success were actually just 40%.

"Curiosity, the most sophisticated Rover ever built is now on the surface of the red planet," said Bolden, "where it will seek to answer age old questions about whether or not life ever existed there on Mars or if the planet can sustain life in the future."

SEE ALSO: Landing Might Be Just One of Mars Rover Curiosity’s Hurdles [COMIC]

NASA, which recently shuttered its Space Shuttle program and has outsourced manned space flight to a consortium of private companies, including SpaceX, spent a reported $2.5 billion on the Curiosity mission. NASA funding has long been a point of contention for space program critics, and Bolden may have been addressing them when he added this impromptu comment during the press conference:

"Tonight, I'm probably not going to include the countries, at least 4 countries — and I won't name them— who are on Mars, and they're on Mars because they went with the United States. I know this may sound a little strange in this international environment, but I want everyone to understand what I say and what I mean when I say: Our leadership is gonna make this world better"

You can watch the full press conference below.

[Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]

Bonus: Curiosity Lands on Mars: NASA's Behind the Scenes Images