Curiosity Rover takes advantage of a breathtaking panorama to celebrate its 9 years on Mars

NASA’s new Perseverance rover hasn’t even been on the Red Planet long enough to get dusty, so whatever it does is still big news. However, the Curiosity rover is still there too, plugging in while staying on the side of Mount Sharp. NASA recently released a new panoramic image of Curiosity to celebrate the rover’s ninth year of exploration of Mars. The expansive snapshot shows where the robot has been as well as where it is going.

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater on August 5, 2012. He used an impressive rocket sled to gently land on the surface, a technique Perseverance used eight and a half years later to begin its mission in Jezero Crater. He began his investigation at the bottom of the crater but has spent most of the past nine years climbing higher on the crater’s central peak, known as Mount Sharp.

From its perch 1,500 feet above the landing site, Curiosity can see all the way to the crater rim about 20 miles away. This is possible because it is currently winter on Mars where there is less dust in the air. Looking at the mountain on one side of the panorama, you can see the smoother clay deposits that the rover spent most of its mission analyzing. These materials likely have a watery past, but the robot is now moving to a region defined by salty minerals called sulfates. Studying samples from this region could help scientists understand how and why Mars dried up in the distant past. Before losing its surface water and atmosphere, Mars may have had the necessary conditions to support the development of life.

The panorama does a great job of showing the veined texture of the sulfate materials around the rover. Scientists believe that these nodules and ripples are the result of groundwater early in the history of the planet. Curiosity collected a sample from this region, the 32nd of its mission. Further analysis could help verify the training mechanisms.

The robot has traveled an impressive 16 miles (26 kilometers) since it landed, and it hasn’t yet. Over the next few months, Curiosity will head into a narrow valley between an outcrop called Rafael Navarro Mountain and a hill the size of a four-construction of history. The team expects to see more geological formations that will shed light on how Mars lost its water. These findings will feed into the ongoing Perseverance mission, which has just started in another part of the Red Planet.

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