This is a small portion of a large megamosaic captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover in 2020.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / LANL / CNES / CNRS / IRAP / IAS / LPG
You can’t visit Mars in person just yet, but NASA can make you feel like you’re there. The Curiosity rover captured an epic megamosaic of distant features highlighting Mars’ sandy and rocky landscape.
The rover team collected the images for the huge mosaic during an extended stay at the “Mary Anning” drilling site in Gale Crater earlier in 2020. Curiosity took the opportunity to do an in-depth study of the area, including the making three drill holes and take a stunning selfie.
Over the course of two months, Curiosity collected “the largest mosaic to date obtained with ChemCam’s Remote Micro-Imager (RMI).” RMI is a camera designed for extreme close-ups, but those imaging talents can also be used to capture telescopic images of distant formations.
It took 216 shots to create the megamosaic, which can be experienced in video form. The views include an area of Mount Sharp, the massive central mountain in Gale Crater where Curiosity is exploring, and a place called Vera Rubin Ridge.
Look at this:
NASA Curiosity Rover Delivers Mars Megamosaic From Mount …
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The video shows visual highlights along the way, including a dune area, the wall of Gale Crater and a dark layer on Mount Sharp.
“When stitched together, RMI mosaics reveal details of the landscape several miles from the rover, providing images that are highly complementary to orbital observations, creating a more human-like, ground-based perspective,” wrote. Stephane Le Mouelic, member of the Curiosity team, a remote sensing specialist at the University of Nantes in France, in an update from the Curiosity mission on Monday.
The megamosaic is a reminder of how Mars can look familiar and feel strange at the same time. It gives us an excuse to take a break from Earth for a few enchanting minutes.