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Curiosity Rover Shoots 360 Video of Rock Hall on Mars

Rock Hall is the nickname given to Curiosity's final drill site on the Vera Rubin Ridge on Mars, a place the rover has been exploring for the past year. In December, as it was getting ready to leave the location for a new one, Curiosity took a panorama of the place using its cameras.
View of Mars sent by by Curiosity 1 photo
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Last week, NASA released a 360-degree video created using the images from that panorama, showing the reddish Martian landscape and its incredible horzon.

Visible in the images are the rover’s former drill sites, the rim and the floor of the Gale crater, but also the so-called clay unit (aka Glen Torridon), the place on Mount Sharp where the Curiosity will be doing business this year.

"We've had our fair share of surprises," said in a statement Curiosity science team member Abigail Fraeman from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We're leaving with a different perspective of the ridge than what we had before."

Presently NASA’s only working rover on the Martian surface, Curiosity’s main task is to dig holes into the soil and learn more about its composition.

Over the years, the rover found traces of ancient water, as the Vera Rubin Ridge seems to have formed as sediment settled in an ancient lake.

Curiosity was the last of three rovers to be sent to Mars, and it departed in 2012.

It is a tad bigger than Spirit and Opportunity, being the size of a small SUV. The rover travels on 20-inch (50.8 cm) wheels which allow it to roll over obstacles up to 25 inches (65 centimeters) high as it looks for the best places to dig holes into.

In 2020, a brand new machine will be joining it. The still unnamed rover will be launched in 2020 aboard an Atlas V 541 rocket, and as soon as it gets to Mars, it will begin preparations for human arrival.

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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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