The money is not really wasted, and your always going to have some failures.

A good audio clip indeed, I was wondering what exactly Adam was doing, and just how exactly how they knew the rover was safe, before the thumb nails came down of course. I still can't really believe it worked and we are all so lucky to have Curiosity safely landed and in one piece, on Mars.

That image is now available again.

Is that a sunshade behind the MMRTG ?

Remember MSL's heat shield had a suit of senors built in to measure temperatures, g forces and how much material ablated away, so they will know how well it performed anyway.

A Mission manager said none will be visited, mainly as they were not decontaminated from earth organics as the rover was, so they don't want any chance of a erroneous organic result due to something transported from Earth.

Don't forget the DS does a rather large avoidance maneuver to prevent the back shell/parachute from impacting the DS as it slows down.

The pointing direction of the landed rover was chosen as part of the EDL, with the front hazcams pointing at the mound. The DS could only fly away in one of two directions, so as to minimize plume impact on the rover, one was southerly, the other northerly.

Does anyone know which anaglyph covers the lading site ?

I was watching whilst the family slept, and I thought she landed a lot quicker than in the simulations, kind of took me by surprise. I think I thought the sky crane hover would take longer, or something.
By my reckoning from powered flight to declared touchdown was only 1 min 14 sec. On reflection a preview video was about the same, but on the night it seemed real quick !

The DM was programmed to burn for 6 seconds, then cut off on the flyaway burn.

Surely they would have burst open on impact ?

There was a lot more left than expected. They had kept asking for more and more during design to make sure they had plenty of reserve, in the end they used way less than expected. It seemed to descend from 3000 m to 500 m really quickly, then in no time at all was on the ground. But in the scheme of things that was far far better than running out of fuel 100 m up.........
Post flight analysis will no doubt explain why they used the fuel they did, and should help in future use of the DS.

Can someone please post a hirise sub image with the rover location on it ?

Is this a new image ?

Jennifer said the wheels are all aligned in the same direction, I believe she was mistaken in that small detail. She possibly had not really taken in the image the reporter was referring to and slightly misunderstood the question.

Yes he said that, so they know exactly where the rover is. He also said they can map it's position to with cm using the full res MARDI pictures.

It's going to be like driving to the Columbia Hills again, but many times better .

The less parts moved around during EDl would be sensible.

MER's were inside airbags, MSL was under a jet plume.

Do you have a url for that, I watched several and they all had the wheels pointing straight ahead, thanks.

I was referring to the cruise stage.

I note the wheels are turned in, does anyone know if this was the planned position of the front wheels at landing ?

I noted at the news conference the EDL guy said they had help from Langley, using assets he best not talk about, the DOD pretty much knows exactly where Curiosity is

I think most of it did, I believe a few denser parts of it may have survived, but not much.