Using its robotic arm as a selfie stick, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity was able to snap some epic low-angle pictures of itself at a site located in the foothills of Mount Sharp earlier this month.
According to BBC News and Space.com, Curiosity snapped the images using the camera at the end of its robotic arm on August 5 while at Marias Pass. NASA officials then took those pictures and stiched them together to create the rover’s latest selfie, which was released on Tuesday.
NASA attempts to take one of these mosaics at every location where Curiosity drills into the surface of the Red Planet, BBC News explained. However, this latest one was different than the others in that it was taken from a lower angle than previous pictures.
The newest photograph was taken at “Buckskin,” the seventh place where the rover has drilled into rock to collect samples for analysis since the start of its mission, BBC said. NASA hopes that analysis of the samples will reveal why the Pass is so “wet.”
Rover studying rocks, searching for water when not taking selfies
Compared with previous pictures, this latest Curiosity selfie shows more of its front and underside, and also shows a pair of grey patches located in front of the rover. One patch (the triangular shaped one) is where the samples were extracted from, while the other was where it dumped the powdered rock grain that was too large to be internally analyzed.
While at Marias Pass, the rover studied what is known as a “geological contact zone,” or an area where two different types of rock come together, using its Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN) instrument. The DAN instrument detected elevated hydrogen levels beneath the rover’s wheels, a sign that there may be a large quantity of water molecules bound to minerals there.
“The ground about one meter beneath the rover in this area holds three or four times as much water as the ground anywhere else Curiosity has driven during its three years on Mars,” DAN principal investigator Igor Mitrofanov explained, according to Space.com.
Activity at the site marked the first full drilling operations performed by the rover since its hammering percussive mechanism experienced a brief short circuit back in February, the website noted.
It finished up work at Marias Pass on August 12 and continued travelling up Mount Sharp. The goal is to travel through the lower regions of the mountain, analyzing rocks and finding changes in the rocks there that had taken place over time. Over the past week, Curiosity has driven a total of 433 feet (132 meters), bringing its total distance traveled to 6.9 miles (11.1 km).
(Image credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
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