Another Curiosity Achievement: Leaving the Landing Ellipse Area

The rover Curiosity, which has been working on Mars for more than the Martian year, passed the next milestone of its mission. Rover went beyond the boundary of the area, which experts called the landing ellipse.

This ellipse is a conditional zone, 20 * 25km. This is the area chosen by NASA for landing the rover on August 5, 2012. The “landing ellipse” is good because in this zone there are practically no landscape features that are critical for the rover, which could lead to a device crash if the landing is not very accurate.
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All this time, the rover moved within the mentioned area, and only on June 27, the device went beyond the boundaries of the conditional ellipse. By the way, right on the edge of the ellipse (imaginary, by itself), Curiosity suddenly stopped, because the systems of the rover recorded a slip on the sand. In fact, there was a weak contact of the wheels of the rover with soft ground.



Mars rover systems are specifically programmed to stop Curiosity from moving if the ground is too soft, in which, if you continue to move, you can get stuck. This time the situation was resolved rather quickly, and the rover continued to move, going beyond the boundaries of the landing ellipse.



Now Curiosity has already passed about 8.4 kilometers, and is confidently moving further to Mount Sharp. During this time, more than 162 thousand photographs were taken, giving factual material about the conditions of Mars to Earth scientists.

After 3.9 kilometers, Curiosity will fall into a natural passage between the dunes, after which it will take relatively little to reach Sharpe Mountain, the end point of the route.

Via universetoday