Photo: NASA
If you've just bought a selfie stick and are very proud of it, allow us to ruin it for you: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has a robotic arm to do the trick.
At the end of the rear mounted robotic arm there's a device called MAHLI (Mars Hand Lens Imager), which is basically a regular camera used to take close-up images of rocks. Yeah, an iPhone was too expensive even for NASA.
Before you start accusing the poor isolated rover of vanity and narcissism, you should know taking 'selfies' and sending them to his friends at NASA is part of Curiosity's regular maintenance program. Some engineers back on Earth scan at every pixel in search of anything that could jeopardize the rover's mission on the red planet.
For instance, this latest shot revealed a previously spotted rock jammed inside one of Curiosity's six wheels is still there and apparently does not affect its ability to perform its tasks in any way.
For this shot, the people controlling the arm's position lowered it more than usual so that Curiosity's belly was exposed. At the time the image was shot, the rover was in its 1,065th day on Mars' surface and was getting ready for some rock drilling on lower Mount Sharp.
In case you're wondering why the robotic arm isn't showing in the shot, it's because the final image was composed from multiple overlaid captures and so the arm could be easily removed for artistic purposes. Not really, they did it so there wouldn't be any visual obstructions. You can see its shadow, though.
We take this thing for granted, but being able to see images from another planet on a constant basis is something truly spectacular. Even though the scenery looks like a regular terrestrial desert, it's not: it's Mars' surface. It's where "Total Recall" was shot. Oh, wait...
You can have a look at the full-res .tiff image here (large file, you're gonna have to download it).
A brief history: Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011 aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012. It has already investigated four different sites and has reached the fifth, "Buckskin".
Before you start accusing the poor isolated rover of vanity and narcissism, you should know taking 'selfies' and sending them to his friends at NASA is part of Curiosity's regular maintenance program. Some engineers back on Earth scan at every pixel in search of anything that could jeopardize the rover's mission on the red planet.
For instance, this latest shot revealed a previously spotted rock jammed inside one of Curiosity's six wheels is still there and apparently does not affect its ability to perform its tasks in any way.
For this shot, the people controlling the arm's position lowered it more than usual so that Curiosity's belly was exposed. At the time the image was shot, the rover was in its 1,065th day on Mars' surface and was getting ready for some rock drilling on lower Mount Sharp.
In case you're wondering why the robotic arm isn't showing in the shot, it's because the final image was composed from multiple overlaid captures and so the arm could be easily removed for artistic purposes. Not really, they did it so there wouldn't be any visual obstructions. You can see its shadow, though.
We take this thing for granted, but being able to see images from another planet on a constant basis is something truly spectacular. Even though the scenery looks like a regular terrestrial desert, it's not: it's Mars' surface. It's where "Total Recall" was shot. Oh, wait...
You can have a look at the full-res .tiff image here (large file, you're gonna have to download it).
A brief history: Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011 aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012. It has already investigated four different sites and has reached the fifth, "Buckskin".
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