Another achievement Curiosity: exit from the landing ellipse Bashny.Net

Mars rover Curiosity, which works on Mars longer than the Martian year, passed another milestone of its mission. Rover has gone beyond the boundary of which experts have called the landing ellipse.

This ellipse - a common area, 20 * 25km. That is the area chosen by NASA for the Mars rover landing on August 5, 2012. "The landing ellipse" is good that in this area there is practically no critical for rover landscape features that could lead to a crash when the device is not very precise landing.

All this time the rover moved within said area, and only 27 June unit has moved beyond a conditional ellipse. By the way, right on the border of the ellipse (the imaginary, by itself) Curiosity suddenly stopped because of the rover fixed sliding on the sand. In fact, there was a weak contact with the wheels of the rover soft ground.



Rover system specially programmed to Curiosity stops moving, if fixed too soft soil, which, subject to the continuation of the movement, you can get stuck. At this time the situation is resolved fairly quickly, and the rover continued movement, going beyond the boundaries of the landing ellipse.



Curiosity was now about 8, 4 kilometers, and confidently moves on to Mount Sharp. During this time it was done more than 162 thousand photos, giving factual information about the conditions of Mars, Earth scientists.

After 3, 9 kilometers Curiosity gets into a natural passage between the dunes, and then to Mount Sharp, the end point of the route, will pass relatively little.

Via universetoday

Source: habrahabr.ru/post/229437/