It's been 21 days since NASA's Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars and rekindled a global interest in space exploration. The landing was renamed yesterday in honor of Ray Bradbury, and American science fiction and horror author who penned Fahrenheit 451.
The Bradbury landing was watched by millions online on the NASA website and was replayed for days on international television channels, but scientists just released the Hi-Res video of the Martian landing so we can relive the last two-and-a-half minutes before Curiosity's landing in Gale Crater. Check out the video after the jump ...
From Nasa:
"This movie from NASA's Curiosity rover shows most of the high-resolution frames acquired by the Mars Descent Imager between the jettison of the heat shield and touchdown. The video, obtained on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT), covers the last two-and-a-half minutes before touchdown in Gale Crater.This is a full-resolution version of the NASA Curiosity rover descent to Mars, taken by the MARDI descent imager. As of August 20, all but a dozen 1600x1200 frames have been uploaded from the rover, and those missing were interpolated using thumbnail data. The result was applied a heavy noise reduction, color balance, and sharpening for best visibility.
The video plays at 15fps, or 3x realtime. The heat shield impacts in the lower left frame at 0:21, and is shown enlarged at the end of the video."
