This Is How a Martian Rover Shoots Itself

Curiosity is presently (since 2014) conducting its business on the Red Planet in a region called Mount Sharp, and as part of it mission at the beginning of March it had to complete the climb of a slope that at one point presented it with a 31-degrees tilt.

According to NASA, it took the rover three drives up the slope to complete the climb, an event that occurred at the beginning of the month, on March 6. During the second drive, the rover tilted at 31-degrees, the most it has ever achieved and second only to the 32-degree record set in 2016 by the now dead Opportunity.

Just before it set out on its mission, Curiosity sent back 86 images of itself that got stitched together by NASA to create the monumental-looking selfie you see as the main photo of this article. According to the agency, what we see in the image is the rover located 11 feet (3.4 meters) “below the point where it climbed onto the crumbling pediment.”

For those curious to see how the rover takes selfies, NASA released a video showing the process from the rover's point of view. It is available below this text.

"We get asked so often how Curiosity takes a selfie," said in a statement Doug Ellison, a Curiosity camera operator at JPL. "We thought the best way to explain it would be to let the rover show everyone from its own point of view just how it's done."

If the coronavirus doesn't stop humanity in its tracks, Curiosity would be joined on Mars in 2021 by another, more potent rover called Perseverance.