Comet Siding Spring Animation

NASA has released the first high-resolution aerial colour image of the Opportunity rover’s landing site on a sprawling Martian plain, where the airbag-cushioned robot fortuitously rolled into a Eagle Crater in January 2004, putting its scientific instruments face-to-face with a block of sedimentary rock that gave ground teams confirmation Mars was once a warmer, wetter, and habitable planet.

With UAE and Chinese Mars probes now on their way to the red planet, all eyes are on NASA’s Perseverance.

The intrepid Curiosity rover has scaled its greatest challenge so far, a steep slope inclined at 31 degrees to the horizontal, leading to a cliff-top region known as Greenheugh Pediment.