Nearly 14 years ago, NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars to explore the Red Planet and see if there was an environment capable of harboring microbial life.
Over the years, the rover has also beamed back impressive images of its surroundings, including the stunning image at the top of this page, taken late last year.
It’s actually a composite of two images – one taken in the morning and the other in the early evening.
Originally black and white, color was later added, with blue representing the morning panorama and yellow representing the afternoon panorama.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is overseeing the Mars mission, says merging images in this way helps highlight details in the landscape.
“The scene captured on this postcard shows Curiosity at the top of a ridge called the Boxwork Formation,” JPL explains on its website. “These formations traverse a region in the lower reaches of Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometer-high mountain that Curiosity has climbed since 2014.”
It continues: “The box-shaped formations are believed to have formed billions of years ago when water dripped through cracks in the rocks on ancient Mars, carrying minerals with it. The minerals hardened after the water dried out; eons later, wind sent the softer rock around these hardened minerals, exposing the ridges that Curiosity explores today.”
The image was taken from the floor of Gale Crater, with the crater rim visible about 40 kilometers away.
Look closely and you can also see the rover’s wheel tracks leading from a place called Valle de la Luna, where Curiosity drilled for a rock sample last year.
The Curiosity mission was designed to last less than two years. The fact that the rover is still on the move and communicating with Earth is a testament to its robust design and NASA’s impressive engineering capabilities.
Since Curiosity’s arrival, NASA has launched another, even more advanced rover: Perseverance. The newer rover, arriving in spectacular fashion in 2021, continues to explore the surface of Mars. Some of his efforts are paving the way for the first-ever manned mission, which could take place in the 2030s.
