NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrates 3,000 days on Mars with an extreme panorama

NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars on August 6, 2012 and just celebrated a milestone anniversary of 3,000 Martian days living the good scientific life on the Red Planet.

A Martian day – called “ground” – is slightly longer than a day on Earth, at just over 24 hours and 39 minutes. Scientists follow Curiosity’s activities on the basis of soils. For example, the raw images taken by the rover are tagged with the ground number, so a photo taken on its birthday would be tagged with “Sol 3000” along with the corresponding Earth date.

NASA marked the special occasion with the release of Glorious Panorama on Tuesday. The panoramic mosaic view of Gale Crater on Mars shows part of Mount Sharp, the massive central mountain inside the crater. “Geologists were intrigued to see a series of rock ‘banks’ in the mission’s most recent panorama,” NASA said in a statement.

The panoramic panorama is made up of 122 images taken by the rover on November 18, 2020, which was Martian soil 2946.

Curiosity is currently heading to an area of ​​the crater known as the “sulphate-containing unit”. “Sulphates, like gypsum and Epsom salts, typically form around water as it evaporates, and they are another clue to how the climate and outlook for life has changed nearly. 3 billion years old, ”NASA said when describing the rover’s journey to the new area. .

NASA’s only functioning Mars rover will soon be joined on the planet by its next-generation sibling when the Perseverance rover arrives in February. Long-living Curiosity will continue to pursue its mission of studying ancient environmental conditions on the Red Planet.

Here are the following 3,000 sols.

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