This is no science-fiction movie or UFO hoax: It's a real picture of the heat shield falling away from NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, snapped by a camera on the rover's underside just a couple of minutes before Sunday night's landing. We've already seen a low-resolution movie clip of Curiosity's descent, as recorded by the Mars Descent Imager (a.k.a. MARDI). This is the first high-resolution MARDI imagery to be sent down.
Eventually, hundreds of frames will be transmitted to Earth and combined to create a high-res movie showing the rover's-eye view of Curiosity's touchdown on the Red Planet. "This is the good stuff," said Mike Malin, who heads up the MARDI team.
The imagery has already been compared with pictures taken by satellites orbiting Mars to figure out exactly where Curiosity ended up. Still more of Curiosity's high-resolution cameras are due to get up and running in the days ahead.
This picture, showing a field of dark dunes running across the red Martian soil inside Gale Crater, is just part of one full-resolution frame: For another version of the wide-angle view, sweetened with a little extra image processing, check out Emily Lakdawalla's post on the Planetary Society blog.
Stay tuned for the rest of the movie from Mars. I have a feeling it'll have a happy ending.
Update for 2:30 p.m. ET Aug. 8: I've added the super-amazing flying-saucer close-up at the top of this item, as well as a video featuring Mike Malin of Malin Space Science Systems, explaining the MARDI image as well as some of the attractions seen from orbit.
More amazing sights from the Curiosity mission:
- Orbital photo spots rover and its trash
- Curiosity sends color snapshot from Mars
- Rover video looks down on Mars during landing
- Mars orbiter spots rover in midair
- NASA's Mohawk Guy marvels at his fame
- Curiosity rover scores touchdown on Mars
- Video: Highlights from rover's first two days on Mars
Hat tip to Doug Ellison at UnmannedSpaceFlight.com and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
