Finally, Mars Curiosity is making tracks on Mars!

The EDL stage of the Mars Curiosity mission is finally over, everything tested, and the rover is mobile!

These are NavCam images, rather than taken using the high resolution MastCam, and they could stand some brightening. But they clearly show Curiosity's tracks away from her landing place.

Lead rover driver Matt Heverly was the one who sent the commands down yestersol (yes that's the Mars NASA word for the previous Mars day), with this message tweeted afterwards:

It is a strange feeling to send commands to Mars and then go home. It is all up to the rover now.

At 3:18 this morning our time, he tweeted:

"We've got images, and they show the tracks", best words I have heard yet over the voice network at JPL.

And of course, being the man of the moment, meant Matt was front and centre for the day's media conference. Makeup!:


Congratulations Matt!

Meanwhile, everything has gone so well for this mission that it has been disturbing wondering when something would go wrong. Well yesterday they found that something. A wind sensor that forms part of the rover's weather sensors is stuck generating full noise, and is therefore useless. NASA believes that it may have been damaged by a rock thrown up by the landing process.

There is another wind sensor on the rover that can be used, but there goes the redundancy...

Let's hope that's it for a while!

Here's a panorama of the drive away, put together by Space.com.