NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has spent more than a year exploring Vera Rubin Ridge on the slopes of Mount Sharp in the heart of Gale Crater. After pausing at the rover’s 19th drill site – the hole is visible to the lower left of the rover near the center of the frame – Curiosity paused to take a selfie on 15 January, the robot’s 2,291st day, or “sol,” on Mars. The Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, camera on the end of Curiosity’s robot arm snapped 57 images that were then stitched together into a panorama. The arm itself is not visible in the resulting image. Curiosity has been studying rocks along the ridge since September 2017. It is now heading for a clay-bearing trough to the south that may hold additional clues about how ancient lakes helped form the lower levels of Mount Sharp.
Related Articles
See all five naked-eye planets gathered in the morning sky
All five of the bright naked-eye planets are observable in the pre-dawn sky from about the third week of January 2016, particularly if one lives south of the equator. But even from the UK, you can get to view the spectacle if you time it right — and the weather obliges! The last time that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn appeared in the same sky was 11 years ago.
Curiosity rover eyes prominent mineral veins on Mars
Two-tone mineral veins at a site NASA’s Curiosity rover has reached by climbing a layered Martian mountain offer clues about multiple episodes of fluid movement. These episodes occurred later than the wet environmental conditions that formed lake-bed deposits the rover examined at the mountain’s base.