Watch the Descent of Curiosity in Stop Motion Animation: The View from the Mars Rover

in Astronomy | August 7th, 2012 4 Comments

The Mars rover Curios­i­ty car­ried a Descent Imager (essen­tial­ly a glo­ri­fied HD col­or cam­era), and accord­ing to Planetary.org, it start­ed shoot­ing images at a rate of 4.5 frames per sec­ond upon its descent. We’ll even­tu­al­ly get access to high-res images (1600 by 1200 pix­els). But, in the mean­time, Curios­i­ty has already beamed back 297 thumb­nail images that have been stitched into a stop ani­ma­tion video, giv­ing you anoth­er look at the dra­mat­ic land­ing. The action starts with Curios­i­ty los­ing its heat shield and ends with it touch­ing down on Mars. How cool is that?


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Comments (4)
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  • joe says:
    August 7, 2012 at 1:17 am

    this is ter­ri­ble. first we get 20 sec­onds of mean­ing­less text. then pics that are booooor­rrrrinnnnngggg.

    Reply
  • simon says:
    August 7, 2012 at 2:14 am

    Joe, I can see how the video may look bor­ing if you don’t under­stand the “mean­ing­less text”.

    This is amaz­ing footage.

    Reply
  • julio says:
    August 7, 2012 at 5:45 am

    the guys send a rover to Mars and then some­body describes it as “boooooor­rrri­i­i­ingggg?” Is this seri­ous?

    Reply
  • Kim says:
    August 7, 2012 at 7:28 am

    I liked this and the dang thing can­not be removed from my FB page nor will it move. Remains sta­t­ic. I want to unlike it here and unable to do that as well. It is act­ing spam­my on my FB wall and this has nev­er hap­pened. Annoy­ing.

    Reply

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