NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover Report #7

A NASA's Mars Curiosity rover team member gives an update on developments and status of the planetary exploration mission. The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft delivered Curiosity to its target area on Mars at 1:31:45 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6, which includes the 13.8 minutes needed for confirmation of the touchdown to be radioed to Earth at the speed of light. The rover will conduct a nearly two-year prime mission to investigate whether the Gale Crater region of Mars ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA's Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks' elemental composition from a distance, are the first of their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop, which are located at the end of its robotic arm, to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover's analytical laboratory instruments.

[Haerodiel]

Sweet! LOVE being up to date about what this rover is doing!

[militarywar]

It takes weeks to get a high def picture. Imagine your self shouting to a friend who is 300m+ away, you might catch one or two words, but you gotta repeat it over and over to catch the entire thing. Its a bit like that, but MILLIONS of miles/kilometers and the images lose a great deal of its information in transit, thats why they use low quality/black and white images, its less information. You can search for some high def images, it just takes a long time to get them and put piece together.