NASAs Curiosity robber just celebrated an important milestone: 3,000 days on the surface of Mars. To mark the occasion, the space agency has released a stunning new panorama of the red planet captured by the rover.
Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. However, scientists track its activities in the days of Mars called “sols,” which are slightly longer than the days on Earth, at 24 hours and 39 minutes.
The epic new panorama, released by the space agency on Tuesday, captures the view of the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater and part of Mount Sharp, the central mountain. It was made through the eyes of Curiosity, aka the Mast Camera.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Curiosity has been gradually climbing and exploring the 3 mile high Mount Sharp since 2014. The most recent find, captured in the panorama, is a series of distinctive ‘bank-like rock formations’, which can also form as a result of erosion such as landslides.
The rock layers of the mountain were formed billions of years ago by bodies of water. “The Curiosity team has seen benches in Gale Crater before, but rarely forms such a nice group of steps,” said NASA.
“Our science team is excited to find out how they came about and what they mean for the ancient environment within Gale,” said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity project scientist, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The panorama is actually a composite of 122 photos taken by Curiosity on November 18. After it was created, the rover moved on to higher ground, making its way to the next large layer called the “sulfate-bearing unit.”
Since the beginning of its mission, Curiosity has been looking for conditions that may have once supported life, collecting rock samples to analyze them.
It has made a number of important accomplishments, including finding evidence that the planet once had persistent liquid water, discovering that the planet was once fit for life, and finding organic carbon molecules, the building blocks of life. It also found present and active methane in the red planet’s atmosphere, detected levels of radiation that could pose health risks to humans, and concluded that Mars’ atmosphere used to be much thicker than it is today.
Curiosity will soon be joined by his sibling, Persistence, when it lands on the red planet in February. Perseverance is designed to bring samples from Mars back to Earth, marking the first round trip to another planet.
