Mars Science Laboratory Post Landing Briefing Sol 1 Midday Update

In the first post landing mission briefing on Sol 1 we get a better idea as to where MSL landed and a peak at the spacecraft during descent from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

“If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape,” said Sarah Milkovich, HiRISE investigation scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “When you consider that we have been working on this sequence since March and had to upload commands to the spacecraft about 72 hours prior to the image being taken, you begin to realize how challenging this picture was to obtain.”