News Item Detail Page Curiosity Rover Lands Safely on Mars Aug
04, 2012 Curiosity touched down at Gale Crater Sunday night,
August 5, 2012. As the drama of the landing unfolded, each step
proceeded without flaw. The capsule entered the atmosphere at
the appointed time, with thrusters guiding it toward the crater.
The parachute deployed. Then the rover and rocket stage dropped
away from the parachute and began a powered descent toward the
surface, and the sky crane maneuver worked as designed. Two
minutes later, the first image popped onto video screens -- a
grainy, 64-pixel-by-64-pixel black-and-white image that showed
one of the rover's wheels and the Martian horizon. A few minutes
later, a clearer version appeared, and then came another image
from the other side of the rover. "That's the shadow of the
Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars," Robert Manning, the
chief engineer for the project, gushed in awe. Because Curiosity
is powered by electricity generated from the heat of a chunk of
plutonium, it could