The stakes were really high--the MSL project cost $2.5 B and NASA has a historical success rate of only about 30% when landing stuff on Mars. Combine this fact with the fact that the new rover is much more massive than the previous ones, and as such required a far more complex landing system... Well, you can just imagine how relieved everyone was when everything worked 100% as intended!
Here's the 3D rendered movie of how the rover would have (and has) landed on Mars:
[video=youtube;P4boyXQuUIw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4boyXQuUIw[/video]
Here's an actual video made out of thumbnails from a camera on board the rover, pointed down to see it release the heat shield and the ground below. You can even see how its rocket engines stir up dust on the surface. It's interesting that they wanted to avoid this by using the sky crane system, but I guess with engines so powerful, all they could do was reduce it by a bit. Otherwise, you'd need really long cables, and that could make things unstable.
[video=youtube;UcGMDXy-Y1I]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGMDXy-Y1I[/video]
Keep in mind that the above is made of thumbnails, and not the actual frames! I believe NASA will be posting a full-res video later. For now, here's a full-res photo, shot just as the heat shield was dropped!
[Image: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/674789main_pia16021-full_full.jpg]
It's beautiful!
In fact, one of the most awesome things about this rover is that it's equipped with really nice HD cameras. The images you usually get from spacecraft may have a lot of scientific value, but can be uninteresting to the average person, because they don't look natural and are often low-res. They really went all-out with this rover, however, so we should get some really pretty, high-res images from it.
Here's the rover's self-portait, taken from its mast-mounted camera, pointed down:
[Image: http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/2446/675207mainpia16027fullf.jpg]
And finally, here's a 360 degree panorama view around the rover:
[Image: http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/733/675227mainpia16029fullf.jpg]
The images were taken late Aug. 8 PDT (Aug. 9 EDT) by the 34-millimeter Mast Camera. This panorama mosaic was made of 130 images of 144 by 144 pixels each. Selected full frames from this panorama, which are 1,200 by 1,200 pixels each, are expected to be transmitted to Earth later. The images in this panorama were brightened in the processing. Mars only receives half the sunlight Earth does and this image was taken in the late Martian afternoon.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
I can't wait to see some nice, colour 1200x1200 shots!
I'm wondering if anyone else here is interested in space stuff and this mission in particular. Perhaps this could be some sort of discussion thread about its developments! Or you could just browse through the new pictures as they are made available by NASA and post your favourites here. :D
All media can be found on NASA's MSL mission page: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html