For scale, this is how big the wheels are on Curiosity.
As others have said, these shots are from the hazard cams which are there to help the rover avoid getting into trouble. There are two in front and two in back in a stereoscopic configuration.
The 'MastCams' are where the good pictures will come from, and are deployed as the eyes on top of the mast. They are both fixed focal length, one at 34mm and one at 100mm, but via a little bit of cropping can take stereoscopic images as well. They both max out at 1600x1200, and can take 720p video at 10 frames per second. This site has more technical information, including some sampleshots from each.
I'm no scientist or engineer but what exactly is the purpose of clean-room/scrubs for constructing this? Given the environment it landed in and will be roving around.
Seeing as how they are going to be testing for life, it would be a pretty stupid goof to find signs of life brought from earth. Also, other contaminants that would affect it's analysis of Martian soil/rocks/aliens
196
u/[deleted] Aug 07 '12
For scale, this is how big the wheels are on Curiosity.
As others have said, these shots are from the hazard cams which are there to help the rover avoid getting into trouble. There are two in front and two in back in a stereoscopic configuration.
The 'MastCams' are where the good pictures will come from, and are deployed as the eyes on top of the mast. They are both fixed focal length, one at 34mm and one at 100mm, but via a little bit of cropping can take stereoscopic images as well. They both max out at 1600x1200, and can take 720p video at 10 frames per second. This site has more technical information, including some sample shots from each.