Space enthusiasts have been abuzz fordays over whether the Mars rover Curiosity captured an extraterrestrial crash.On Friday, NASA declared the mystery solved.
Seconds after the car-size rover parked its six wheels in an ancient crater, atiny camera under the chassis snapped a picture revealing a smudge on thehorizon. The feature disappeared in a later photo.
Was it dirt on the camera lens or a spinning dust devil? It turned outCuriosity spotted the aftermath of its rocket-powered backpack crash-landing inthe distance.
It "was an amazing coincidence that we were able to catch thisimpact," said engineer Steve Sell of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory,which manages the $2.5 billion mission.
The nuclear-powered rover landed in Gale Crater near the equator Sunday nightto study whether environmental conditions could have favored microbes. Itsultimate target is a mountain looming from the crater floor where mineralsignatures of water have been spied.
Curiosity performed a novel, complex landing routine. In the final seconds, therocket stage hovered as cables delicately lowered the rover to the ground.After landing, it cut the cords and the rocket stage flew out of the way,crashing 2,000 feet (610 meters) from the landing site.
Speeding at 100 mph (161 kph), the high-speed impact kicked up a plume of dust— which showed up in Curiosity's field of view.
Curiosity was in the right place at the right time and facing the rightdirection, Sell said.
Since the feat, Curiosity has returned a flood of pictures including a360-degree color view and a low-resolution video featuring the last minutes ofits descent. Over the weekend, it will get a software update, a process thatwill take four days. During the hiatus, stored data will continue to bedownloaded.
It will be weeks before Curiosity can take its first drive, zap at boulders ordig up soil in search of the chemical building blocks of life. The prime missionlasts two years.
A preliminary reconstruction of the "seven minutes of terror" plungethrough the Martian atmosphere revealed everything went as planned. Curiosityended up 1 1/2 miles (2.41 kilometers) downrange from the bull's-eye target,probably because of tail winds and a late steering turn.
"We're still happy where we landed," said Gavin Mendeck of the NASAJohnson Space Center.