From NASA Rover of curiosity just celebrated an important milestone: 3,000 days on the surface of Mars. On the occasion of the occasion, the space agency has launched a new stunning panorama of the red planet, captured by the rover.
Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. However, scientists track their activities on Martian days, called “suns”, which are slightly longer than Earth days, at 24 hours and 39 minutes.
The new epic panorama, launched by the space agency on Tuesday, captures the view of the 96-mile-wide Gale crater and part of Mount Sharp, its central mountain. It was taken by the eyes of Curiosity, also known as the Mast Camera.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Curiosity has been rising and gradually exploring the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp since 2014. Its most recent find, captured in the panorama, is a series of “bank-like rock formations” that can also form due to of erosion. like landslides.
The rock layers of the mountain were made up of bodies of water billions of years ago. “The Curiosity team had already seen banks in Gale crater, but rarely did they form such a scenic cluster,” NASA said.
“Our scientific team is delighted to find out how they formed and what they mean for Gale’s ancient environment,” said Ashwin Vasavada, a scientist in the Curiosity project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The panorama is actually a composite of 122 images taken by Curiosity on November 18th. After being taken, the rover continued to higher ground, making its way to the next main layer, called the “sulfate carrier unit.”
Since it began its mission, Curiosity has been looking for conditions that could have contributed to life, collecting rock samples along the way to analyze them.
He has had several major successes, such as finding evidence that the planet once had persistent liquid water, discovering that the planet was suitable for life, and finding organic carbon molecules, the basic components of life. He also found active 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 rover brother, Perseverance, when it lands on the red planet in February. Perseverance is designed to bring samples from Mars to Earth, marking the first round trip mission to another planet.
