[ad_1]
This 360-degree panorama was taken on August 9, 2018 by NASA's Curiosity rover at its location on Vera Rubin Ridge.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS
Curiosity, NASA's rover, has captured itself and its exotic and colorful environments from the red planet in one 360-degree shot.
Curiosity took the panoramic photo on August 9, shortly after completing its last sample of drilled rock. The interactive image, published today by NASA (Sept. 6), shows the diversity of the Vera Rubin Ridge terrain, which the car explorer has explored for about a year. The dust darkens the sky above Curiosity and pepper the deck of the six-wheeled robot.
There has been a lot of dirt in the Martian atmosphere since the end of May, when a dust storm erupted near Opportunity's smallest cousin, Curiosity. This eruption intensified rapidly, blocking sunlight on solar opportunity, which was killed on June 10th. On June 20, the storm was transformed into an enveloped maelstrom of the planet. [Mars Dust Storm 2018: What It Means for Opportunity Rover]
The dust storm ceased to intensify at the end of July and continues to deteriorate. Opportunities have not yet emerged, but NASA officials have expressed optimism that they may end up hearing the venerable mobile before too long.
The curiosity is nuclear propulsion, so the dust storm has not affected its activities too much. But the 1 ton rover has had other problems lately. For example, the two previous drill attempts of Curiosity – those before the breakthrough of early August – did not produce any usable samples.
These failures do not reflect the effectiveness of the new Curiosity bypass drilling technique, adopted by the mission team after the failure of a key drilling component at the end of 2016 The new method works pretty well, said members of the Curiosity team; the rocks the rover tried to drill were just very difficult.
The hardness may be the result of longstanding groundwater flows, which have spilled some kind of cement into some of the sediments that formed Vera Rubin Ridge, Curiosity principal investigator Ashwin Vasavada of a NASA statement.
Vera Rubin Ridge is located on the slopes of Mount Sharp, the 5.5-kilometer-high mountain in the center of the 154-kilometer wide Gale crater. The foothills of Mount Sharp were the main scientific destination of Curiosity even before the launch of the rover; Members of the mission team have always wanted the rover to cross these foothills, reading the story of the changing environmental conditions of Mars in the rocks.
The mission team plans to conduct two more drill operations on Vera Rubin Ridge this month. If all goes as planned, Curiosity will leave the ridge in October to head to clay and sulphate deposits on Mount Sharp, NASA officials said.
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @ michaeldwall and Google+. follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook orGoogle+. Originally published on Space.com.
[ad_2]
Source link
