Video: Curiosity rover captures 360-degree panorama of Mount Sharp on Mars, displaying altering panorama: Digital Pictures Assessment

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover just lately explored Mount Sharp. The mountain is 8km (5 mi) tall and is inside the 154km-wide (96 mi) basin of Mars’s Gale Crater. Curiosity captured a brand new 360-degree panorama at Mount Sharp, revealing its numerous terrain and shedding gentle on the realm’s historical atmosphere.

NASA writes, ‘Photographs of knobbly rocks and rounded hills are delighting scientists as NASA’s Curiosity rover climbs Mount Sharp, a 5-mile-tall (8-kilometer-tall) mountain inside the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) basin of Mars’ Gale Crater. The rover’s Mast Digicam, or Mastcam, highlights these options in a panorama captured on July 3, 2021 (the three,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission).’

Finding out the area has been a long-term purpose for the Curiosity mission, which is now in its ninth 12 months on Mars. By learning the layers of Mount Sharp, scientists hope to know how the atmosphere of Gale Crater dried over time. Related adjustments in mineral composition are seen throughout the planet, so understanding Gale Crater ought to pay dividends in understanding different elements of Mars.

‘The rocks right here will start to inform us how this once-wet planet become the dry Mars of as we speak, and the way lengthy liveable environments endured even after that occurred,’ stated Abigail Fraeman, Curiosity’s deputy venture scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

‘NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Digicam, or Mastcam, to seize this 360-degree view close to “Rafael Navarro Mountain” on July 3, 2021, the three,167th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Stitched collectively from 129 particular person photos, the panorama has been white-balanced in order that the colours of the rock supplies resemble how they would seem beneath daytime lighting circumstances on Earth. A craggy hump that stretches 450 toes (137 meters) tall, the geologic function is situated on Mount Sharp in northwest Gale Crater.’ Credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS. Click on to enlarge.

When Curiosity landed on Mars on August 5, 2012, its major mission was to check whether or not totally different Martian environments might have supported microbial life in Mars’s historical previous. Lakes and groundwater as soon as existed inside Gale Crater, and scientists need to use Curiosity to know higher what occurred and the way Mars modified over time.

Trying ahead, Curiosity is at the moment working its manner up a path between Rafael Navarro Mountain and a towering butte. Within the coming 12 months, Curiosity will drive previous these options and enter a canyon. It is going to then revisit Greenheugh Pediment.

You possibly can be taught extra in regards to the Curiosity mission by visiting NASA’s dedicated Mars website. You can too take a look at a few of our prior protection, together with Curiosity photographing rare shimmering clouds in June and a neat selfie Curiosity despatched to Earth in March.