Getting our Bearings: Sol 0 (Landing day) review UPDATE 2

Ladies and gentlemen, Gale crater, Mars.

Rear hazcam image. Shown is part of the lens cover spring, left wheel and the nuclear power plant's cooling fin. Gale crater's rim is visible in the upper right corner in the distance. A spattering of dust can also be seen  (NASA).

We are finally here! Now we have to find our bearings. I think we should start with the all important question; where in Gale crater are we?

Best determined position of Curiosity (green diamond) lies north of some dark dunes (NASA)

Ideally we’re supposed to be at the centre of the ellipse that I talked about recently here. According to the recent news bulletin Curiosity drifted a little more to the east than expected putting us a little closer to mount Sharp. The area as far as I can tell from the first images is a flat plain, apparently featureless plain which I suppose is part of the alluvial fan lying to the north of the landing ellipse which is also a target of exploration because alluvial fans on Earth are a formed by flowing water . Curiosity is a robotic geologist so we have to become amateur geologists of a sort to follow the mission effectively. The soil consists of uniform gravel and is by my INexperience unlike anything I’ve seen on Mars yet, which is a good thing! It’s part of exploration to find unfamiliar things.

The alluvial fan relative to the landing site on a topography map (NASA)

The initial images appeared dirty because the dust cloud that was probably kicked up by the descent stage’s rockets at landing (this component of the space craft has been safely disposed of as far away as possible to prevent Curiosity from coming in to any harm from the remaining rocket fuel most likely still onboard) quickly settled on to the rover, including its many cameras. Nobody would like dust on any camera lens. So Curiosity’s ever crafty engineers had a lens cover installed which popped open soon afterwards. However despite that measure some dust, which is known to be fine and sticky, got on to the lens as you can see in the first image. You can also see in the image the dark shadow of the Gale’s crater walls in the distance to the right. If you’re already wondering where the cameras are on the rover, NASA has this nifty image showing you all the cameras aboard.

NASA

According the the 4pm GMT news briefing today we will have Mars Odyssey do an orbital pass over Gale crater today (as of this post Curiosity is asleep and it’s now almost 4am in the morning at Gale crater). Mission members present at the briefing talked about the importance of working with Martian time. What is this? It’s important to realise that a day on Mars lasts 40mins longer than on Earth. So we are out of sync with the red planet by 40mins every day. And the mission team have to adjust their work reporting times accordingly everyday! So for the next ninety days their alarm clocks will go off 40mins earlier everyday and this will soon cause them to go to work at bizarre times. This is necessary for two reasons; first you need to use every minute of day light on Mars effectively which means living by the rover’s work times and not Earth work times. Two, there is a need for the team to meet together with at such times to build a sort of rapport between each member so that when they all go back to their home institutions they’ll be able to work as effectively as when they were together with or without Mars time. Talk about strenuous. You wouldn’t want such people as spouses!

But I think the most heart-stopping image released today yet is an image shot by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of the Curiosity rover descending to its new home today. Simply smashing!

Caught in the act by MRO's powerful HiRISE camera. The parachute cords cannot be seen due to lighting. (NASA/University of Arizona)

Today everything went by the books and I think this bodes well for the mission. Later on we should expect thumbnail images from the Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) attached to the belly of the rover which captured images during today’s descent. I expect great images!

This is now Sol 1 of the Curiosity mission. The rover is currently oriented in an East-West direction. They are still checking out important systems and driving will not begin until a few weeks later. More bigger pictures in colour expected later. Stay tuned!

PLEASE NOTE: the hazcam images may show a curved horizon but that's because it's a fish-eye lens camera which gives a good 180 degree view but distorts the image into curves. The horizon is quite flat.

I found a good article explaining how MRO took the money shot of Curiosity from above. Eric Hand at Nature News Blog shows how us what happened.

UPDATE 2: To provide some perspective of what we're looking at right now, I took snapshots of the landing site using Google Mars. Enjoy.

Mount Sharp. MSL's position is marked by a mini-American flag near centre. The white line is the landing ellipse (Google)

At the slopes of the mount are dark dunes which consist of basaltic sand. MSL landing site to the left. In the walls of the crater are seen in the distance. (Google)