n">Aug 9 (Reuters) - A former U.S. lawmaker who lobbied for China's second largest telecommunications-equipment maker, ZTE Corp, severed ties with the company last month after reports that the FBI is investigating ZTE for allegedly selling banned computer equipment to Iran, according to a lobbying disclosure report.

Former Representative Jon Christensen, a Nebraska Republican, filed a termination report to the U.S. Senate's lobbying disclosure database saying he stopped representing the company as of July 13, a day after news broke of the FBI investigation.

Christensen, who served in Congress in the 1990s, did not respond to phone calls or emails on Thursday.

"ZTE doesn't comment on personnel matters," said Anna Hughes of Ogilvy Public Relations, speaking on behalf of ZTE.

Christensen's departure was first reported by Politico.

The FBI probe and a separate one by the U.S. Department of Commerce were triggered by a Reuters report in March that Shenzhen, China-based ZTE had sold Iran's largest telecom a surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and Internet communications.

A day after the Reuters report, the Commerce Department issued a subpoena to ZTE. The company's general counsel in Texas, Ashley Kyle Yablon, told FBI agents that ZTE officials at that point discussed shredding documents relevant to the subpoena, according an FBI affidavit first reported by the website The Smoking Gun.

Yablon told the FBI the company used "sub companies" to buy sophisticated U.S. telecommunications equipment to get around restrictions on selling to countries like Iran.

ZTE, which sells equipment in 140 countries, according to its website, reported revenues in 2010 of $10.6 billion.

Primarily known for its smart phones, ZTE has a subsidiary specializing in surveillance and security technology.

The United States first imposed trade sanctions on Iran in 1979. More recently, the United States has joined other nations in additional trade sanctions based on its alleged nuclear weapons program.

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LONDON | Wed Aug 8, 2012 11:51am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - An impressionist portrait by French painter Edouard Manet will stay in Britain after an eight-month campaign raised nearly 8 million pounds ($12 million) to buy it.

The "Portrait of Mademoiselle Claus" will be on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, which launched the campaign to stop it going abroad.

The painting was sold to a foreign buyer last year for 28.35 million pounds. However the British government placed an export bar on the work which allowed it to be bought by a British public institution for a quarter of its market value.

"The public's response to the campaign for the Manet has been overwhelming," said Ashmolean Director Christopher Brown.

"This is one of the most important pictures of the 19th century which has been in Britain since its sale following the artist's death in 1884," he added in a statement.

The campaign saw donations from more than 1,000 members of the public, trusts and foundations, along with 5.9 million pounds from the Heritage Lottery Fund and 850,000 pounds from the Art Fund charity.

Manet painted the portrait of musician Fanny Claus, his wife Suzanne Leenhoff's closest friend, in 1868.

The painting will be lent to public museums and galleries as part of a nationwide tour next year.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

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* Panoramic view shows rust-colored surface strewn with gravel

* First 'self-portrait' reveals pebbles kicked up on top of craft

* NASA engineers prepare vehicle for four-day software upgrade

PASADENA, Calif., Aug 9 (Reuters) - The science rover Curiosity took a break from instrument checks on its third full day on Mars to beam back more pictures from the Red Planet, including its first self-portrait and a 360-degree color view of its home in Gale Crater, NASA said on Thursday.

The panoramic mosaic, comprising 130 separate images that Curiosity captured with its newly activated navigation cameras, shows a rust-colored, pebble-strewn expanse stretching to a wall of the crater's rim in one direction and a tall mound of layered rock in another.

That formation, named Mount Sharp, stands at the center of the vast, ancient impact crater and several miles from where Curiosity touched down at the end of an eight-month voyage across 352 million mile (566 million km) of space.

The layers of exposed rock are thought to hold a wealth of Mars' geologic history, making it the main target of exploration for scientists who will use the rover to seek evidence of whether the planet most similar to Earth might now harbor or once have hosted key ingredients for microbial life.

But mission controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles are exercising caution immediately following Curiosity's jarring, death-defying descent to the surface on Sunday night.

They plan to spend weeks putting the nuclear-powered, six-wheeled rover and its sophisticated array of instruments through a painstaking series of "health" checks before embarking on the thrust of their science mission in earnest.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity project, formally named the Mars Science Laboratory, is NASA's first astrobiology mission since the Viking probes of the 1970s and is touted as the first fully equipped mobile geochemistry lab ever sent to a distant world.

EQUIPMENT CHECKUPS

After three full days on the Red Planet, "Curiosity continues to behave flawlessly" and has "executed all planned activities" without a hitch, mission manager Michael Watkins said at a JPL news briefing.

The latest round of equipment checks included an instrument designed to determine mineral composition of powdered rock and soil samples; one to analyze soil and atmospheric samples for organic compounds; one to detect traces of water locked in shallow mineral deposits; and another that uses particle X-rays to identify chemical elements in rocks and soils.

The very delivery of Curiosity to the surface of Mars already has been hailed by NASA as the greatest feat of robotic spaceflight.

The car-sized rover, which flew from Earth encased in a protective capsule, blasted into the Martian sky at hypersonic speed and landed safely seven minutes later after an elaborate, daredevil descent combining a giant parachute with a rocket-pack that lowered the rover to the Martian surface on a tether.

Since then, the rover has been sending a string of early images back to Earth, relayed by two NASA satellites orbiting Mars, providing glimpses of a terrain that scientists say appear reminiscent of the Mojave Desert in Southern California.

One shot beamed back late Wednesday night, the first taken by Curiosity of itself, shows the rover's top deck strewn with dark pebbles apparently kicked up from the ground when the craft landed. NASA scientists said the gravel does not appear to pose any risk to instruments on the vehicle.

Two separate high-resolution "Navcam" images taken of the surface show that thrust from the sky-crane rockets during descent carved out a 1.5-foot (0.5-meter) trench in the surface, exposing what appears to be Martian bedrock underneath.

When Curiosity wakes up for its fourth day on Mars, early Friday California time, mission controllers plan to conduct additional instrument checks and prepare the craft for an upgrade of its main computer software for surface operations. All other activities will be suspended during that upgrade, which will begin on day 5 of the mission and last four days. (Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Anthony Boadle)

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* Prototype NASA landing vehicle goes up in smoke

* Engineers still looking into cause of fiery accident

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., Aug 9 (Reuters) - A small NASA lander being tested for missions to the moon and other destinations beyond Earth crashed and burned after veering off course during a trial run at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, officials with the U.S. space agency said.

There were no injuries after the prototype, known as Morpheus, burst into flames near the runway formerly used by NASA's space shuttles.

The insect-like vehicle, designed and built by engineers at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, had made several flights attached to a crane before Thursday's attempted free-flight.

Morpheus' engines, which burn liquid oxygen and methane, appeared to ignite as planned, lifting the 1,750-pound (794 kg) vehicle into the air. But a few seconds later, Morpheus rolled over on its side and plummeted to the ground.

NASA video showed the vehicle engulfed in flames and then rocked by a spectacular explosion, presumably due to the fuel tanks rupturing.

“"Failures such as these were anticipated prior to the test, and are part of the development process for any complex spaceflight hardware," NASA said in a statement.

An investigation is under way, the statement added.

Project Morpheus began in partnership with privately owned Armadillo Aerospace, which is developing re-usable, suborbital vehicles that take off and land vertically.

NASA, which has spent about $7 million on the project over the past 2-1/2 years, is interested in developing technologies that could be used to fly cargo to the moon and other future missions beyond Earth orbit.

Project Morpheus was an example of what the former project manager called "“Home Depot engineering" - low-budget projects that use existing resources and partner with non-traditional aerospace companies.

“"The Morpheus lander is kind of our poster child. It's one of our first attempts to do these kinds of projects," former project manager Matt Ondler said in an interview with Reuters last year.

“"Instead of building some elaborate test structure, you go to Home Depot and build something very quickly that gets you 80 percent of the answer and allows you to keep moving forward," he said.

Morpheus arrived at Florida's seaside space center in July for three months of increasingly rigorous test flights, including automated landings in a mock moonscape, complete with craters and boulders.

The lander was designed to deliver about 1,100 pounds (500 kg) of cargo to the moon, NASA said on its Project Morpheus website.

Technologies being developed include a propulsion system that uses liquid oxygen and methane -- green fuels that could be manufactured on other planetary bodies, NASA said.

The accident happened as NASA scientists were still hailing the Mars rover Curiosity's descent and landing on the Red Planet earlier this week as a "“miracle of engineering."

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