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Curiosity's View Of Mt. Sharp And A Bird's Eye Video Of Her Descent

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High res image of Mt. Sharp

NASA's latest images from the Curiosity rover (she's been on Mars for about 18 hours now) show its great, face-on view of Mars's Mount Sharp. The mountain is about 4 miles away, and is 3 miles high. It's larger than any mountain on the lower 48 of the US here on Earth.

One of the mission's goals is to head over and investigate this mountain, which is in the middle of Mars's Huge Gale Crater where the rover landed.

These images are from the front Hazcam, with the covers taken off. The Hazcams are used to watch the rover's wheels, to check for any debris that might be in her way. These are the highest resolution images sent back so far from these cameras. See more images here from the Hazcams.

More images will be send back as the rover spends more time on Mars. The rover will be powered up in about an hour and a half: around 6pm Pacific time, 9pm Eastern. Her first full day will be spent checking her instruments and making sure everything is working well before she spends time looking around and moving through the crater.

In the latest press conference, NASA also showed some great color images from Curiosity's down-facing camera, showing the heat shield headed away. This image was taken about 2 minutes and 15 seconds into her seven minutes of terror. The shield is about 50 feet away: Curiosity's downfacing camera imageA second image shows an ellipse of dust being blown up from the rover's landing:

Curiosity's dusty landing

See the full video of her descent below:

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