Over a thousand single shots and 1.8 billion pixels make up the latest images of the Mars landscape captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover. These are the highest resolution images ever of the red planet. Protagonist of the shots also spread on Twitter from the U.S. Space Agency is Mount Sharp, the large mountain in the center of the Gale crater, where the rover landed in 2012.
The shots during Thanksgiving
Curiosity took 360-degree images with its Mastcam camera between November 24 and December 1, during Thanksgiving, when technicians and researchers working on the mission were out of the office. In order not to leave the rover totally “idle”, NASA engineers have programmed it so as to make it photograph the nearby panorama, from the same point and for several days in a row. In 6 hours and a half of shots over 4 days, Curiosity captured the images that the technicians then assembled in the following weeks. “While many of our team members were at home enjoying the turkey, Curiosity produced this feast for the eyes,” said Ashwin Vasavada, an employee at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The interest of geologists
The rover is specifically exploring the Glen Torridon region, immortalized in the shots released by NASA, since January 2019. It is an area very rich in clay minerals trapped in the layers of sedimentary rock, which is why it is of great interest to planetary geologists. The study of these rocks, also thanks to the high resolution images captured by Curiosity, can provide important information on the history of the climate of Mars.
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