9th Anniversary of Rover Mission!
NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this 360-degree view on July 3, 2021. The panorama is made up of 129 individual images that were sent to Earth, after which they are stitched together. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
It is the 3167th Martian day, or sol, of the Rover mission. Curiosity climbs Mount Sharp within the basin of Gale Crater. And the Mastcam shoots the fantastic panorama you see above. Curiosity landed nine years ago, on Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (Aug. 6, 2012 EDT), to study whether different Martian environments could have supported microbial life in the planet’s ancient past when lakes and groundwater existed within Gale Crater.
Five spacecraft are currently in orbit about the Red Planet to make up the Mars Relay Network to transmit commands from Earth to surface missions and receive science data back from them. This network shows that Curiosity is now somewhere between a region enriched with clay minerals and one dominated by sulfates. This is important because scientists want to discover how the environment within the Gale crater dried up over time. The mountain´s layers in this area may provide valuable clues about that process, and studying this region is one of the major long-term goals for the mission.
Mars once was wet, but it changed into the dry planet we know today. One of the questions scientist want to answer is how long habitable environments persisted after this happened. Rover pulverizes rock samples with a drill on its robotic arm. Instruments can determine which chemicals and minerals are present. Curiosity recently drilled its 32nd rock sample from a target nicknamed `Pontours´ that will help detail the transition from the region of clay minerals to the one dominated by sulfates.
In the coming year, Rover will drive up a path between Rafael Navarro Mountain and a towering hill that is taller than a four-story building. After this Rover returns to the Greenheugh Pediment that Rover visited last year.
The Rover mission had its 9th anniversary, but there is still a lot to discover!
This breathtaking video tour highlights a new panorama from NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover, captured on July 3, 2021 (the 3,167th Martian day, or sol of the mission). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Interesting links:
Life On Mars? Maybe, but at Least the Clouds Are Breathtaking
New Feature Discovered in One of the Milky Way’s Spiral Arms
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