Watch the Descent of Curiosity in Stop Motion Animation: The View from the Mars Rover

The Mars rover Curios­i­ty car­ried a Descent Imager (essen­tial­ly a glo­ri­fied HD col­or cam­era), and accord­ing to Planetary.org, it start­ed shoot­ing images at a rate of 4.5 frames per sec­ond upon its descent. We’ll even­tu­al­ly get access to high-res images (1600 by 1200 pix­els). But, in the mean­time, Curios­i­ty has already beamed back 297 thumb­nail images that have been stitched into a stop ani­ma­tion video, giv­ing you anoth­er look at the dra­mat­ic land­ing. The action starts with Curios­i­ty los­ing its heat shield and ends with it touch­ing down on Mars. How cool is that?