NASA's Curiosity rover has snapped its first color photo of the
Martian landscape from the surface, using a camera that is still
packed away on its long robotic arm. The new Mars photo reveals
a view of the terrain north of the Curiosity rover, and shows
the north wall and rim of Gale Crater in the distance, NASA
officials said Tuesday in an image description. Curiosity
touched down on the Red Planet on Sunday night inside Gale
Crater, a sprawling impact basin that stretches 96 miles (154
kilometers) across. While a camera on the rover's underbelly
snapped hundreds of color photos of Mars from above during the
descent, the new image is the first color view from Curiosity on
the ground. Space news from NBCNews.com Teen's space mission
fueled by social media Science editor Alan Boyle's blog:
"Astronaut Abby" is at the controls of a social-media machine
that is launching the 15-year-old from Minnesota to Kazakhstan
this month for the liftoff of the International Space Station's
next crew. - Buzz Aldrin's vision