The Curiosity rover is seen crawling on a rugged Martian mountain

A satellite zooming around Mars spotted a single machine, the Curiosity Rover, exploring the rugged terrain of Mars.

The car-sized rover, which has traveled nearly 13 miles on Mars over the past seven years, now climbs carefully up to the base of Mount Sharp, a 5-km mountain located at middle of the vast crater Gale. The rover was busy scouring rock samples in an area that planetary scientists suspected had once been covered with wet clay.

"This is only one of the many stops that the rover has made in an area called" clay-based unit "located on the Mount Sharp side," NASA wrote Friday.

Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech

A prominent ridge, called the Vera Rubin Ridge, can be seen cutting to the left (or north-west) of the vehicle, while ripples of black sand are to the right of the six-wheeled robot.

The rover looks like a shiny grain, as the sun shone out of Curiosity at the proper angle when the NASA's reconnaissance Orbiter plunged over his head.

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NASA projects that the nuclear propulsion machine will reach tens of meters. Over the next few years, we decided to study the landscape and improve our understanding of what was the desert terrain today billions of years ago. when the Martian planet was a wetter and more blue place.

In 2020, a rover the size of a more advanced car will join Curiosity on Martian soil. The new rover will explore the Jezero crater, a 30 km wide bowl with a depth of about 1,640 feet. It is thought to have already held a lake from a depth of 800 feet about 3.5 billion years ago.