17 Cameras and one complete Chemistry Lab on wheels … successfully landed on MARS

If you don’t by now know, there where the heck have you been for the last 24 hours … on MARS?

Well we have a slightly higher resolution image now (left) taken by one of the vehicle’s lower-fidelity, black-and-white Hazard Avoidance Cameras – or Hazcams.

“Curiosity’s landing site is beginning to come into focus,” said John Grotzinger, project manager of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “In the image, we are looking to the northwest. What you see on the horizon is the rim of Gale Crater. In the foreground, you can see a gravel field. The question is, where does this gravel come from? It is the first of what will be many scientific questions to come from our new home on Mars.”

While the image is twice as big in pixel size as the first images beamed down from the rover, they are only half the size of full-resolution Hazcam images. During future mission operations, these images will be used by the mission’s navigators and rover drivers to help plan the vehicle’s next drive. Other cameras aboard Curiosity, with color capability and much higher resolution, are expected to be sent back to Earth over the next several days.

Still not excited yet? Well these guys are, here is the moment they find out that they have had a successful touchdown …

What is also cool is that we all get to find out as it happens … here in twitter … https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity (they have over half a million followers)

The Facebook page is here – http://www.facebook.com/MarsCuriosity

I’m also hearing that in Times Square, there was a  crowd was chanting “Science! Science! Science!”.

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