A quick look at the main photo of this piece might have you thinking you’re looking at some type of cell culture growing on a Petri dish, as seen through the magical power of a microscope. Yet you’re looking at a sizeable chunk of the surface of Mars, as seen from orbit.
The HiRISE camera aboard NASA s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this photo of the Curiosity rover ascending Mont Mercou on April 18, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UArizona)
Curiosity landed inside the 96-mile-wide (154 km) Gale Crater in August 2012, on a mission to determine if the area could ever have supported microbial life. The answer to this question is yes; the six-wheeled robot s observations have shown that Gale hosted a
In September 2014, Curiosity reached the foothills of Mount Sharp, which rises high into the Martian sky from Gale s center. The rover has been climbing the mountain ever since, examining the layered rock deposits for clues about Mars long-ago transition from a relatively warm and wet world to the cold desert planet that it is today.
MRO captured the image on April 18 using its High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment tool (HiRISE), which can spot features as small as a kitchen table. So, even at an altitude of 270km above the rover at the time, the car-sized Curiosity rover was in plain sight, according to the HiRISE team’s image description.
Since 2014, Curiosity has been climbing the 5km-high Mount Sharp, the central peak of the Gale Crater. Its mission has been to scour the red planet for past signs of microbial life. In early March, Curiosity began approaching Mont Mercou, which is named after a mountain in France, as Insider reported.
Goddard Space Center Chief Scientist Jim Garvin provides insight on ‘Fox New Live.’
The photos were captured using the agency s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), a spacecraft that has studied the Martian atmosphere and the planet s terrain from orbit for 15 years.
The MRO is equipped with the powerful High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, which has aided in a number of discoveries.
HiRISE took the picture on April 18 from an altitude of 167.5 miles above the rover, according to the image s description from Arizona s HiRISE Operations Center. NASA s Curiosity rover ascends Mars Mont Mercou in an aerial image captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter s (MRO) HiRISE camera. (Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)
NASA s Curiosity rover on Mars spotted scaling the Mont Mercou from Space
Just a few days ago, we got our first pictures from China s Tianwen-1 Mars probe. We now have images of NASA s Curiosity rover on Mars spotted scaling the Mont Mercou from Space. Written By NASA s Curiosity rover on Mars spotted scaling the Mont Mercou from Space
The Curiosity rover first landed on Mars on the 6th of August, 2012 and has been active for about eight years and 289 days. Curiosity measures up to a size of a full-size sedan on earth. The Curiosity rover designed to carry out a two-year mission is still active as of 22nd of May, 2021.