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NASA shares a photo of the surface of Mars to celebrate the 3,000th day of Curiosity on the red planet.
The panoramic photo was set by several photos taken by Curiosity. Image: NASA.
More than 3,000 Mars days have passed since Curiosity’s robot landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. The robot continues to deliver new discoveries while climbing the 5km high Sharp Mountain that Curiosity has discovered since 2014.
Geologists have recently been surprised to find a series of rocks in Panorama. Panorama, compiled from 122 photographs taken on November 18, 2020, the 2,946th day of Mars’ Curiosity, is the result of a mast camera (mastcam) that acts as the “main eye” of the robot.
At the center of the panorama is the base of the 154-kilometer-wide Gale Gorge around Mount Sharp. The horizon in the photo is the northern edge of the abyss, at the top right of Mount Sharp, where layers of rock formed from the erosion effects of lakes and streams existed billions of years ago.
The characteristic feature of this area is that the curved rock layers cover more and more layers of rock. As the soft rock layer erodes, the hard layer forms smaller rocks, leaving a bench-like structure. When giant rock formations slide down a steep slope, they can be formed during a landslide. The Curiosity project team had previously seen long rocks in the Gale abyss, but they rarely formed many steps.
“Our team is very excited to learn how rocks formed and what they mean to the ancient environment within the Gale Valley,” says Aswin Vaswada, Curiosity Project Scientist at the Power Laboratory. NASA Jet Propulsion in Southern California building and managing robots.
Shortly after the panoramic photo was taken, Curiosity continued to soar into the high ground. This year, the robot will run through a clay container called “Glen Doridon”.
A Cong (As stated therein Science and Technology Daily)
