New Mars photos arrive from Curiosity rover (+video)
New Mars photos: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has taken its first color photo of the surface of Mars.
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has snapped its first color photo of the Martian landscape using a camera that is still packed away on its long robotic arm.
The new Mars photo reveals a view of the terrain north of the Curiosity rover, and shows the north wall and rim of Gale Crater in the distance, NASA officials said in an image description today (Aug. 7).
Curiosity touched down on the Red Planet on the night of Aug. 5 (PDT; Aug. 6 EDT) inside Gale Crater, a sprawling impact basin that stretches 96 miles (154 kilometers) across. While a camera on the rover's underbelly snapped hundreds of color photos of Mars from above during the descent, the new image is the first color view from Curiosity on the ground.
The rover's first color surface photo was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which is located on a turret at the end of the rover's robotic arm. Curiosity snapped the photo on the afternoon of its first day after landing, which mission controllers label Sol 1 to mean the first Martian day of operations. Sol 1 began on Aug. 6, according to NASA officials.
