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Curiosity Across the Stars

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


This is not a comet, it's Curiosity on its way to Mars

This, I guarantee, is a view of NASA's Curiosity rover embarking on its 250 day trip to Mars that you may not have seen before. It's an extraordinary piece of time-lapse footage taken from Australia not long after launch from Cape Canaveral. It shows a glowing plume from the Centaur stage after a burn over the Indian Ocean - the Centaur rocket has propelled Curiosity first into a low-Earth orbit and then into an escape trajectory towards Mars. You can also see the sunlit spacecraft itself, a tiny speck gliding across the star-fields of the Milky Way as it heads for interplanetary space.

Bon voyage Curiosity!


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With thanks to the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium