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NASA’s Curiosity rover has
been an unqualified success from the moment it arrived on Mars aboard a
rocket sled in 2012. It has driven more than 10 kilometers, helped
confirm the existence of ancient lakes on Mars, and collected data on
Martian geology that could be invaluable for future missions. Still,
Curiosity isn’t too busy to stop for a quick selfie, the fourth such
image released by NASA/JPL.
This new Curiosity selfie was taken on Sol 1228 on Mars; the Martian day is slightly longer than Earth’s. It’s in a region called the Bagnold Dune Field, and in the background you can see a structure called Namib Dune. When it wasn’t taking selfies, Curiosity used its wheel to loosen sand from Namib Dune, which it then scoped up for analysis.
As with past images of the rover, you can’t see the arm that was used to position the camera, because this image is actually a mosaic of more than fifty individual photos. They were all taken with the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). This is a true color camera with a maximum resolution of 1600×1200 — roughly 2 megapixels. That’s not a very high resolution, and wasn’t even back when Curiosity was built. However, the sensor is hardened to withstand the harsh Martian environment. Your fancy 16MP smartphone camera wouldn’t last a day.
Combining all the smaller images taken with MAHLI allowed NASA to crop the arm out of the final image and obtain a resolution of 5623×6000. JPL has the full resolution JPEG and uncompressed TIFF available for download, as well as cropped versions suitable for wallpapers. The full image has a ton of detail; you can even see the rut where Curiosity used its wheel to loosen up the sand.
You might also notice Curiosity is looking a bit haggard these days. The wheel closest to the camera has an easily identified hole, and the formerly white chassis of the rover is now caked with red Martian fines. If you look back at some of the earlier selfies, Curiosity looked so shiny and new. However, it still works perfectly after three and a half years on Mars — twice as long as the original design spec. JPL really built this robot to last.
Curiosity’s design will serve as the template for NASA’s still-unnamed 2020 rover mission. That rover will examine Mars in an effort to determine if it ever supported life, or perhaps still does. Maybe Curiosity will still be trundling around the planet when the 2020 rover lands, much in the same way Opportunity is still going 12 years later. NASA extended Curiosity’s mission indefinitely, so as long as it’s functional, it’ll keep doing science.
This new Curiosity selfie was taken on Sol 1228 on Mars; the Martian day is slightly longer than Earth’s. It’s in a region called the Bagnold Dune Field, and in the background you can see a structure called Namib Dune. When it wasn’t taking selfies, Curiosity used its wheel to loosen sand from Namib Dune, which it then scoped up for analysis.
As with past images of the rover, you can’t see the arm that was used to position the camera, because this image is actually a mosaic of more than fifty individual photos. They were all taken with the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI). This is a true color camera with a maximum resolution of 1600×1200 — roughly 2 megapixels. That’s not a very high resolution, and wasn’t even back when Curiosity was built. However, the sensor is hardened to withstand the harsh Martian environment. Your fancy 16MP smartphone camera wouldn’t last a day.
Combining all the smaller images taken with MAHLI allowed NASA to crop the arm out of the final image and obtain a resolution of 5623×6000. JPL has the full resolution JPEG and uncompressed TIFF available for download, as well as cropped versions suitable for wallpapers. The full image has a ton of detail; you can even see the rut where Curiosity used its wheel to loosen up the sand.
You might also notice Curiosity is looking a bit haggard these days. The wheel closest to the camera has an easily identified hole, and the formerly white chassis of the rover is now caked with red Martian fines. If you look back at some of the earlier selfies, Curiosity looked so shiny and new. However, it still works perfectly after three and a half years on Mars — twice as long as the original design spec. JPL really built this robot to last.
Curiosity’s design will serve as the template for NASA’s still-unnamed 2020 rover mission. That rover will examine Mars in an effort to determine if it ever supported life, or perhaps still does. Maybe Curiosity will still be trundling around the planet when the 2020 rover lands, much in the same way Opportunity is still going 12 years later. NASA extended Curiosity’s mission indefinitely, so as long as it’s functional, it’ll keep doing science.
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