Mars Rover Curiosity Snaps a Selfie on the Red Planet
Curiosity snaps a selfie of where it has been working for past five months.
— -- NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover has snapped a selfie on the red planet showing off the terrain where it has been working for the past five months.
Dozens of images taken from the rover's robotic arm were woven together to create the selfie, which shows off the Pahrump Hills site where Curiosity has been exploring and drilling to learn more about the Martian environment.
A version of the photo released by NASA points out the various spots where Curiosity has been conducting research over the past five months. The images used for the mosaic selfie were taken at the Mojave 2 drilling site.
"Compared with the earlier Curiosity selfies, we added extra frames for this one so we could see the rover in the context of the full Pahrump Hills campaign," Kathryn Stack, a member of the Curiosity team, said in a statement. "From the Mojave site, we could include every stop we've made during the campaign."
Curiosity's next stop will be at a site called Telegraph Peak, where NASA plans to have it drill for another sample that can be analyzed and shed new insight on how Mars' environment has changed.
The car-sized, nuclear powered explorer was launched in November 2011 and arrived on Mars in August 2012.