Enjoy its beautiful view with Mars rover Curiosity.
Although Mars rover Perseverance has been in the spotlight lately, we must not forget that there is another American Mars rover on the red planet. It’s about Curiosity; a Mars robot that has been conducting research on Mars for almost ten years. And now this robber is making himself heard again. Because Curiosity has shot a very breathtakingly beautiful picture.
More about Curiosity’s mission
Curiosity landed in Gale Crater in August 2012; a 154 kilometer wide basin, formed by an ancient impact. The rover has uncovered many of the secrets of this crater in recent years. For example, Curiosity has found strong indications that the crater was filled with water in the past. At the heart of the crater is Mount Sharp. This mountain is made up of deposited sediments and actually forms a time capsule: each layer tells something about a different period in the history of Mars. Curiosity is currently conducting a thorough investigation of this mountain. It is hoped that this will teach us much about the Red Planet’s past.
Every time after Curiosity has traveled a bit, it takes a picture of its surroundings. In mid-November, the mission team again ordered Curiosity to shoot some photos. However, the researchers were amazed by the images the rover came up with. To make it easier to send these images to Earth, Curiosity saves them in a low-quality compressed format. But when the rover team saw the view from Curiosity, the scene was just too beautiful not to capture it in the highest quality the navigation cameras are capable of.
Breathtaking snapshot
The resulting image is composed of multiple black-and-white photos taken at 8:30 AM and 10:15 PM local Martian time. These two different times of day provided contrasting lighting conditions that brought out a variety of landscape details. These black and white photos can be seen below.
Mars rover Curiosity used its black-and-white navigation cameras to take pictures of its view at two times of the day. In this photo, its surroundings can be seen at 8:30 a.m. local Martian time. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Mars rover Curiosity used its black-and-white navigation cameras to take pictures of its view at two times of the day. In this photo, its surroundings can be seen at 4:10 p.m. local Martian time. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The researchers then added blue, orange and green colors. This resulted in the beautiful image below, with elements from the morning in blue, elements from the afternoon in orange and a combination of both shown in green tones.
The breathtaking view of Mars rover Curiosity. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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The photo shows the beautiful view of Mars rover Curiosity. In the center of the image you can see the steep descent of Mount Sharp. The rover has been climbing this five-kilometer high mountain since 2014. In the distance on the right you see rounded hills. Curiosity took a look here last July. A large ‘sand field’ known as “Sands of Forvie” extends 400 to 800 meters away. On the far right of the photo is the steep “Rafael Navarro Mountain,” named after a Curiosity scientist who passed away earlier this year. Behind it emerges the upper part of Mount Sharp. This is quite a bit higher than the area Curiosity is currently exploring. The distant rim of Gale Crater is about 2.3 kilometers long and is visible on the horizon at about 30 to 40 kilometers.
While we can enjoy the beautiful view of Curiosity for a while, the rover has to move quickly again. Ultimately, researchers hope that the rover can provide more insight into how a warm and humid (and possibly habitable) Mars turned into a dry and cold (and possibly unlivable) Mars.
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