I just stumbled across this awesome action shot of the Curiosity rover’s landing! The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard the Mars Renaissance Orbiter captured this picture of the rover’s deployed parachute. The HiRISE team then stretched the image to avoid desaturation, to show even more detail (that’s the view shown in the inset).
This image shows the rover about one minute prior to landing. At this time, it was traveling a few hundreds of miles per hour and was about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) above the Red Planet’s surface.
For size reference, the parachute spans 51 feet (16 meters), and each pixel of this image resolves 13.2 inches (33.6 centimeters).
Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona