NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter just snapped the scene of the crime: all the pieces of the Entry Descent Landing system that worked flawlessly together to safely put Curiosity on the surface of Mars.
The image was taken by MRO’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, 24 hours after the landing.
You can see it all: the heat shield, the back shell, the parachute and finally the sky crane, which crashed hard after the umbilical cords were cut with guillotines fired by pyrotechnic devices.