PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s latest adventure to Mars has given the world more than just glimpses of a new alien landscape.

It opened a window into the trip itself, from video footage of the landing, to a photo of the rover hanging by a parachute, to a shot of discarded spacecraft hardware strewn across the surface. And the best views – of Mars and the journey there – are yet to come.

“Spectacular,” mission deputy project scientist Joy Crisp said of the footage. “We’ve not had that before.”

Since parking itself inside an ancient crater Sunday night, the Curiosity rover has delighted scientists with views of its new surroundings, including the 3-mile-high mountain it will drive to. It beamed back the first color picture Tuesday, revealing a tan-hued, pebbly landscape and the crater rim off in the distance.

Locale aside, Curiosity is giving scientists an unprecedented sense of what it took to reach its Martian destination. The roving laboratory sent back nearly 300 thumbnails that NASA processed into a low-quality video showing the last 2½ minutes of its white-knuckle dive through the thin Martian atmosphere.

In the video, the protective heat shield pops off and tumbles away. The footage gets jumpy as Curiosity rides on a parachute. In the last scene, dust billows up just before landing.

“It’s too emotional for me,” said Ken Edgett of the Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the video camera. “It’s been a long journey, and it’s really awesome.”

The full high-resolution video will be downloaded when time allows and should give the first peek of a landing on another planet.

Curiosity’s journey to Mars spanned eight months and 352 million miles. The rover gently touched down Sunday night after executing an elaborate and untested landing routine. The size of a compact car, it was too heavy to land using air bags. Instead, it relied on a heat shield, parachute, rockets and cables to lower it to the ground.

It’ll be several weeks before Curiosity takes its first drive and flexes its robotic arm. Since landing, engineers have been busy performing health checkups on its systems and instruments. Over the next several days, it was poised to send back crisper pictures of its surroundings, including a panorama.

The rover was “still in great shape,” said mission manager Michael Watkins.