Okay, so the Curiosity rover landed on Mars is going to start doing science pretty soon. Or whatever. At this point, it's old news, and NASA has already moved on to its next mission to Mars, a lander called InSight.
Missed the Curiosity landing the first time around because you were busy watching the Olympics or something? That's okay because Spaceflight101 cobbled together this high def video of Curiosity's descent from some high-res images and, man, is it quite a sight.
Ever since the Curiosity Mars rover landed on the red planet, we've been waiting for it to do something really cool. Sure it's been up there snapping away with its cameras like a tourist, but now it has unleashed its mighty ChemCam laser, and started shooting a nearby rock.
Since Curiosity landed on Mars, the rover's been busy beaming back photos for us earthlings to salivate over. One fan took the high-res photos that Curiosity shot from its second day on Mars and stitched them into a 360-degree interactive panorama. This is probably the closest you'll ever get to visiting Mars — for now, anyway.
To put all the megapixel nuts in their place, NASA's released this high-resolution color mosaic of Mars stitched together from 79 photos. We can't remember the last time we were so enchanted by rocky mesas.
Did you look at the "high-res" photo of Mars that Curiosity shot and wonder how many gigahertz and megapixels it took to get that photo? We advise you to sit down, because the 2,000-pound rover's guts are pretty weak compared to today's powerful smartphones and tablets.
Ever since its dramatic, flawless landing on Mars, Curiosity has been busy, well, being a bit of an interplanetary tourist. And who wouldn't go a little camera crazy on the surface of Mars? Here's one of the latest images from the rover: the crispest image yet of the terrain around it.
Elon Musk, who helped launch PayPal, Tesla Motors and most recently SpaceX, is pretty dang serious about getting our asses to Mars. Before Curiosity, colonies on Mars were knocked back to the 2030s — or beyond, even. Now? We may only have to wait "12 to 15 years."
Sol 1 marks the first day of operations for NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. To usher in the start of its 98-week mission, Curiosity was kind enough to send along the first color photo of the Martian landscape around it since landing.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory couldn't have hoped for a more perfect Mars landing for Curiosity. The complex descent went off without a hitch, and not only did Curiosity start sending postcards from Mars immediately, but the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter had a surprise for the world, too.