NASA’s Curiosity rover had downtime in November. But instead of resting, the robot captured stunning footage from dawn to dusk on Earth’s neighboring planet.
On November 8, the 4002nd Martian day (sol) of its mission, Curiosity shot two black-and-white videos. This downtime of Curiosity during the mission was caused by the fact that Mars was on the opposite side of the Sun to Earth, which prevented stable communications. During such periods, called Mars solar conjunctions, control operators stop sending commands to robots on the Red Planet because solar plasma can interfere with those commands, although the missions still send regular “health checks” back to Earth.
This year, the Mars fleet was without communications for two weeks, from November 11 to November 25, with the last instruction Curiosity received telling it to begin imaging its surroundings with two hazard detection cameras (HazCams).
These cameras are typically used to detect rocks, slopes and other hazards that could be risky for Curiosity to navigate, but they can be used for other purposes when the rover is idle.
In 12 hours of footage, consisting of 25 frames collected over 24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds of the Martian day between 5:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. local time, Curiosity’s shadow can be seen sliding across the surface of Mars, turning the robot into solar watch.
The Curiosity team hoped to see Martian clouds or dust devils crossing the surface of the Red Planet in the video, but these days in the region turned out to be calm.
