Confirmed: Mars rover Curiosity took photo of craft crash-landing - Los Angeles Times

The final seconds of Curiosity's eight-month-plus journey to Mars called for a spacecraft to lower the rover to the surface using a "sky crane" &mdash; three ropes. The ropes were then cut, and the last of the spacecraft, known as the "descent stage," cast itself toward the horizon. It crash-landed, on purpose, about 2,000 feet away.Many had dismissed the plume as dirt on the camera lens, but engineers pointed out that the initial photo was taken in stereo, with two side-by-side lenses. Both images picked up the same blotch. That eliminated the possibility that the lens was simply dirty, and confirmed, Sell said, that "the artifact was real."<br />http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-0811-mars-curiosity-photo-confirmed-20120811,0,5983256.story