Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
For the past six years or so, the Curiosity rover has been NASA’s photo reporter on Mars, sending back a great number of exciting images back from the Red Planet, including several selfies. The rover is also the one credited with possibly finding traces of life on the neighboring planet.
Curiosity's most recent efforts concentrated on the Vera Rubin Ridge, a place it has been exploring since September 2017. Now, the machine is packing up its gear and getting ready to move on to its new target, a clay region on Mount Sharp. But not before taking 57 photos of itself.
The rover snapped the pics on January 15 using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera. The images were then stitched together to form the image released on Monday by NASA and show the human-made machine in the surrounded by the reddish Martian dust.
The Curiosity is currently NASA’s only working rover on Mars.
The very first, a proof of concept if you like called Sojourner, lasted for about three months, from July to September 1997, and then contact was permanently lost.
The following two rovers that were sent to Mars, the Spirit and Opportunity brothers, managed to far outlive their 90-day life expectancy. The Spirit was active for six years, from 2004 to 2010, while the Opportunity marshaled on well into 2018, when it apparently was lost to a planet-wide dust storm (efforts to revive it are still ongoing).
Curiosity was the last rover to be sent to Mars, in 2012. It is a tad bigger than its other siblings, 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.
If it manages to survive, Curiosity will be joined next year by another, yet unnamed rover.
The rover snapped the pics on January 15 using its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera. The images were then stitched together to form the image released on Monday by NASA and show the human-made machine in the surrounded by the reddish Martian dust.
The Curiosity is currently NASA’s only working rover on Mars.
The very first, a proof of concept if you like called Sojourner, lasted for about three months, from July to September 1997, and then contact was permanently lost.
The following two rovers that were sent to Mars, the Spirit and Opportunity brothers, managed to far outlive their 90-day life expectancy. The Spirit was active for six years, from 2004 to 2010, while the Opportunity marshaled on well into 2018, when it apparently was lost to a planet-wide dust storm (efforts to revive it are still ongoing).
Curiosity was the last rover to be sent to Mars, in 2012. It is a tad bigger than its other siblings, 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.
If it manages to survive, Curiosity will be joined next year by another, yet unnamed rover.
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