Curiosity: The Complete Mission in Real-Time 3D
August 6, 2012
Experience the Curiosity mission of August 6, 2012: follow the spacecraft's real journey from Earth to Mars, down to the Gale Crater landing, in a real-time 3D reconstruction.
It's November 26, 2011.
The most ambitious rover ever built is about to leave Earth, bound for Mars.
Curiosity lifts off from Cape Canaveral. An Atlas V rocket carries it toward space on a pillar of fire.
The four solid boosters burn out and fall away, their work of punching through the lower atmosphere done.
The nose fairing splits open and drops away, revealing the aeroshell that will shield the rover all the way to Mars.
Trans-Mars injection: the upper stage fires one last time and flings Curiosity out of Earth orbit, onto its long cruise to the red planet.
Folded inside is Curiosity itself: a nuclear-powered rover the size of a small car, the heaviest machine ever sent to another planet.
Its target is Gale Crater, an ancient lakebed, chosen to ask a single question: could Mars once have supported life?
Ahead, Mars swells from a faint red star into a full disc. The most dangerous seven minutes of the mission are about to begin.
The cruise stage is cast off. Alone now, the aeroshell turns to face the atmosphere.
Entry. Curiosity strikes the top of the atmosphere at 21000 km/h. The seven minutes of terror have begun.
The heat shield glows behind a sheath of plasma, its face reaching some 2100 degrees Celsius.
Still supersonic, the huge parachute mortars open with a violent jolt, wrenching the capsule down from Mach 1.7.
The heat shield drops away, baring the landing radar and the rover to the Martian sky for the first time.
Backshell and parachute are cut loose. The descent stage lights its rockets and takes control of the fall.
The sky crane hovers and gently lowers Curiosity to the surface on three nylon cables.
Touchdown. Curiosity's wheels settle onto Gale Crater. The cables are cut, and the rover has arrived on Mars.