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Close-up of Curiosity in Gale Crater, July 2019

Edited NASA PR image from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the Curiosity Rover near the base of Mount Sharp in Gale Crater. Color/processing variant.

 

Image source: photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA23341

 

Original caption: NASA's Curiosity Mars rover can be seen in this image taken from space on May 31, 2019, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). In the image, Curiosity appears as a bluish speck.

 

The image shows Curiosity at a location called "Woodland Bay." It's just one of many stops the rover has made in an area referred to as the "clay-bearing unit" on the side of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain inside of Gale Crater.

 

Look carefully at the inset image, and you can make out what it is likely Curiosity's "head," technically known as the remote sensing mast. A bright spot appears in the upper-left corner of the rover. At the time this image was acquired, the rover was facing 65 degrees counterclockwise from north, which would put the mast in about the right location to produce this bright spot.

 

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

 

Image Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

Image Addition Date:

2019-07-12

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Uploaded on July 14, 2019