Curiosity Rover Snaps a Photo of the Dust Storm That Battered Opportunity

The Curiosity is currentlydoing its thing on the Vera Rubin Ridge, a stop on its way up Mount Sharp. From this ridge, the rover took a few shots of its surroundings, as a means to investigate it. What resulted is a 360-degree panorama of the place with some very interesting things to be seen.

First, there’s the fading global dust storm in the distance, the one that NASA believes may have completely killed one of its Martian explorers, the Opportunity. The curtain of dust seen in the distance at one point covered the entire planet.

Then, there’s the ridge itself. NASA says it is a place that is unprecedented in terms of variation in color and texture. It is not a monolithic geographical feature as one would expect but is made up of two sections, each of them with a variety of colors.

The photos also show, in a very rare instance, the Mast Camera of the rover itself and Martian dust on the rover’s deck. The next target of the rover’s investigations, a rock NASA calls Stoer, is also to be seen.

Curiosity arrived on Mars in 2012. It is the size of a small SUV, measuring 9 feet 10 inches in length and 9 feet 1 inches in width (3 m by 2.8 m). Its main area of business is drilling holes into the Martian soil and analyzing them in its onboard labs.

To get to new targets, the rover travels on 20-inch (50.8 cm) wheels which allow it to roll over obstacles up to 25 inches (65 centimeters) high.

You can explore the Curiosity surrounding in the 360-degree video posted below.