NASA’s Curiosity rover has been on Mars since August 2012 and during that time it has shared some beautiful images of the Red Planet during its 14-kilometer journey.
It was widely seen at the time as part of its mission to find out if Mars had any water other than the chemical building blocks that could point to evidence of ancient life.
To mark eight years since the rover landed, NASA has shared eight ‘Mars postcards’ with a selection of panoramas captured by the car.
Among the photos shared by the NASA JPL team are a selfie taken during a dust storm, the ripples of a sand dune and clouds seen in the sky above the robber.
The £ 1.9 billion machine was the first to take a ‘selfie’ on Mars during its mission to collect rock samples, study the atmosphere and search for water.
self-portrait taken by NASA’s Curiosity rover, taken in June 2018 as a global dust storm embracing Mars, filtering sunlight and obscuring the view
This image was taken back when NASA’s Curiosity rover was at Mount Sharp base on March 24, 2014 and shows just how far Curiosity has traveled in just over six years.
The Mast Camera, as Mastcam, on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its telephoto to capture Mount Sharp in the morning light on October 13, 2019
The car rover has 17 cameras and a robotic arm that it can use to study the air, the ground and its way around the surface and across various terrains.
NASA shared the image a week after launching the next generation rover – Perseverance – on a space flight that will land on Mars in February 2021.
It will join Curiosity in a quest for signs of ancient life and water – and will also collect stone monsters that will eventually be returned to Earth.
In his eight-year mission – and reckoning – Curiosity traveled about 14 miles and drilled 26 rock samples – found that Mars was indeed fit for life.
Studying the textures and compositions of ancient rock strata helps scientists share a piece of how the Martian climate has changed over time.
It lets them know how it has lost lakes and streams to become a cold desert.
The Curiosity mission is led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, and includes nearly 500 scientists from the United States and other countries around the world.
It launched for the Red Planet in November 2011 and hit the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater on August 5, 2012.
The rover is nuclear-powered and found that at various points in the ancient past – possibly regions of a million years at a time – the planet was host to water.
It has discovered complex organic chemicals – the building blocks of life – during its slow journey across the planet’s surface.
For the past six years, the rover – about the size of a MINI Cooper – has climbed Mount Sharp’s foothills – thrown 3.4 miles into the air from Gale Crater.
This broad panorama was taken by NASA’s Curverity Mars rover on December 19, 2019. On the right foreground is Western Butte; the ridge with a crusty hood in the background is the Greenheugh pediment, which Curiosity launched in March of 2020
These 26 holes represent each of the rock samples collected by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover in early July 2020. A map at the top left shows where the holes were drilled along the rover route, along with where they were six dots of soil. the shutter
Two sizes of wrinkles are evident in this December 13, 2015, view of a top of a Martian sand dune, from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover
Here you can see clouds in the Martian sky captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover.
Mount Sharp is one of the images shared by NASA to mark the anniversary of the Curiosity landing on Mars – the image is actually 44 images stitched together.
Curiosity will never venture to the top of the mountain; instead they explore the many layers that are lower.
Each has a different story to tell about how Mars, which was once more than Earth (warmer and waterier), has changed over time and in 2021 will reach the next layer.
“I love this image because it tells two stories – one about the mission and one about Mars,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist at JPL.
Another image – ‘You Are Here’ – was shot at the base of Mount Sharp on March 24, 2014 and is a panorama that shows how far Curiosity traveled in six years.
A 2015 photo shows the surface of a Martian sand dune, with two types of wrinkles clearly visible in the photo.
The final image, from July 2020, contained images of all the holes that Curiosity has been digging in the Martian surfaces since it first landed eight years ago.
THE NASA MARS CURIOSITY ROVER WHEN LAUNCHED IN 2011 AND HAS IMPROVED OUR SERVICE FROM THE RED PLANET
The Mars Curiosity rover was initially launched from Cape Canaveral, a US Air Force base in Florida on November 26, 2011.
After a journey of 350 million miles (560 million km), the £ 1.8 billion ($ 2.5 billion) research car was only 1.5 km (2.4 km) away from the impoverished landing site.
After a successful landing on August 6, 2012, the rover traveled about 11 miles (18 km).
It was launched on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft and the rover accounted for 23 percent of the mass of the total mission.
With 80 kg (180 lb) of scientific instruments on board, the rover weighs a total of 899 kg (1,982 lb) and is powered by a plutonium fuel source.
The rover is 2.9 meters (9.5 ft) long by 2.7 meters (8.9 ft) wide by 2.2 meters (7.2 ft) in height.
The Mars-curious rover was originally intended to be a two-year mission to gather information to answer if the planet could support life, have liquid water, study the climate and geology of Mars and has been active for more than 2000 days.
The rover was originally intended to be a two-year mission to gather information to answer if the planet could support life, have liquid water, study the climate and geology of Mars.
Due to its success, the mission has been extended indefinitely and is now active for more than 2000 days.
The rover has several scientific instruments on board, including the mastcam which consists of two cameras and can take high resolution images and videos in real color.
So far on the robot’s journey with cars, it has encountered an ancient riverbed where liquid water was used to flow, not long after it was also discovered that billions of years ago, a nearby area known as Yellowknife Bay part of a lake that could have supported microbial life.
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