Tuesday, August 7, 2012

MAHLI and MARDI Sol1

The Mars Hand Lens Imager or MAHLI, located on the robotic arm of Curiosity, has returned it's first image looking northwards and in the distance you can see the wall of the crater Gale.
(NASA/JPL/MSSS)
The image has been tilted to 30 degress to depict the horizon and sky correctly (that's the instrument's orientation right now). The image quality is bad because of the dust sitting on the lens cap. Once the cap is removed, MAHLI will be able to capture anything from the size of a penny to the scenery around the rover in colour!

MARDI, the descent camera has some wonderful thumbnail images and my favourite is the first showing the heat shield falling away.
Shields away! (NASA/JPL/MSSS)
 Brilliant!

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