Images of the heat shield from Curiosity impacting the ground.
From YT: This sequence of images shows the heat shield from NASA's Mars Science Laboratory hitting the ground on Mars and raising a cloud of dust. The images were taken by the Mars Descent Imager on the mission's Curiosity rover while the rover was still suspended on a parachute, after the spacecraft had jettisoned the heat shield.
A dark spot, the shadow of the heat shield, enters the scene from lower left, moving toward the center. The bright heat shield itself is also apparent just before the shadow and hardware meet in the impact on the surface. The area of ground visible in the images is about six-tenths of a mile (1 kilometer) across. The frames shown here are cropped portions of full-frame images from the Mars Descent Imager.
The sequence includes 25 frames, repeated in five run-throughs for this presentation. The action is full speed in the first, fourth and fifth run-throughs. It is one-half and one-eighth speeds in the second and third run-throughs.
4 Comments
BuckThe martians in that area are pissed.
Boise_LibLooks cool, but also a great source of information once the rover gets some on-site measurements and pictures.
ponceleonWas this also the thing that caused the odd-shaped plume in some of the first pics that was there for a moment and then disappeared? The conspiracy nuts immediately claimed it was a structure and that NASA was editing the pics to remove it. Goes to show: no matter what you say to a nut, they will continue to come up with the most outlandish explanation for stuff, even when faced with facts and reason...
ReverendTed>> ^ponceleon:
Was this also the thing that caused the odd-shaped plume in some of the first pics that was there for a moment and then disappeared?Yes, the dust plume of this impact triggered some initial speculation.
Edit: No, wait. I was wrong. The dust plume in question was the skycrane impact, not the heat shield.
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