NASA’s Curiosity rover celebrates 3,000th day on Mars with breathtaking panorama of the planet

From NASA Curiosity rover just celebrated a milestone – 3,000 days on the surface of Mars. To mark the occasion, the space agency released a breathtaking new panorama of the Red Planet, captured by the rover.

Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. However, scientists track its activities in Martian days, called “soils,” which are a bit longer than Earth days, 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, its central mountain. It was taken through the eyes of Curiosity, AKA the Mast Camera.

Curiosity has been climbing and gradually exploring the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp since 2014. Its most recent find, captured in the panorama, is a series of “bench-shaped rock formations”, which can also form due to the erosion. like landslides.

The rock layers of the mountain were shaped by bodies of water billions of years ago. “The Curiosity team has seen shoals in Gale Crater before, but rarely forms such a cluster of steps,” NASA said.

“Our science team is excited to understand how they formed and what they mean for Gale’s ancient environment,” said Ashwin Vasavada, scientist for the Curiosity Project, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The panorama is actually a composite of 122 images taken by Curiosity on November 18. After its capture, the rover continued to higher ground, heading to the next main layer, called the “sulfate-containing unit”.

Since the beginning of its mission, Curiosity has researched conditions that could have supported life, collecting rock samples along the way to analyze them.

He had a number of major achievements, including the discovery of evidence that the planet once had persistent liquid water, the discovery that the planet was once suitable for life, and the discovery of organic carbon molecules, the building blocks of of life. He also found methane present and active in the atmosphere of the Red Planet, detected levels of radiation that could pose health risks to humans, and concluded that Mars’ atmosphere is much thicker than it is. is not today.

Curiosity will soon be joined by its rover brother, Perseverance, 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 mission to another planet.