Curiosity Martian Anniversary: ​​A Whole Year on the Red Planet

Anniversary selfie Curiosity

Since Curiosity is on Mars, the Martian celebrates the anniversary. Today is exactly the Martian year (687 Earth days) since the landing of the rover on the planet’s surface.

The jubilee was celebrated at NASA by creating a festive selfie of the Martian reptilian rover. Selfies, as usual, are created from many individual photos taken by the device. How similar photos are created, on Habré already wrote, below there is a video with an explanation.

This is how the rover takes pictures of itself:



And here is a brief report from the team:




The path traveled by the rover is marked in red. The white line is the path that the rover will follow in the near future.

It is worth recalling that the main task of the rover was to find out the possibility of the existence of conditions suitable for the emergence of life. That is - the presence in the past of a suitable atmosphere, liquid water and other conditions. Almost immediately, it turned out that yes, the climate and atmosphere of ancient Mars were suitable for supporting life.

So, back in August 2012, Curiosity discovered an ancient riverbed at the landing site. Near the landing site, an area called Yellowknife Bay was investigated, where the rover, after a detailed survey of the terrain, laser spectroscopy and sampling of the soil, could give a clear answer “yes” to the question of whether the conditions in the Gale crater (in the distant past of Mars) were suitable for the existence of life.

In addition, an important goal was and is to measure the level of radiation background of the Red Planet. This information is vital for planning future manned human expeditions to Mars.

Via nasa