Zapping Rocks Exposed by the Sky Crane's Thrusters . photonado

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Zapping Rocks Exposed by the Sky Crane's Thrusters

This photo mosaic shows the scour mark, dubbed 'Goulburn,' left by the thrusters on the sky crane that helped lower NASA's Curiosity rover to the Red Planet. It is located 16 to 20 feet (5 to 6 meters) to the left of the rover's landing position. The sky crane appears to have uncovered an outcrop of loosely consolidated rocks during the rover's landing. The mosaic consists of six images from the remote micro-imager (RMI) on the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument, shown around an image from the Mast Camera for context. Each RMI image has a field of view of 4 to 5 inches (10 to 12 centimeters) across and shows details as small as 0.02 to 0.03 inches (0.5 to 0.6 millimeters). ChemCam's laser was used to analyze material at the centers of panels 2, 3 and 4. JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/mars , and http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl .

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/IRAP/MSSS
Image released by NASA on 2012-08-22 as catalog id PIA16090