NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on August 9, producing a 360-degree panorama of its current location on Mars' Vera Rubin Ridge.

September 06, 2018

After snagging a new rock sample on Aug. 9 (Sol 2137), NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on Mars, producing a 360-degree panorama of its current location on Vera Rubin Ridge.

The panorama includes umber skies, darkened by a fading global dust storm. It also includes a rare view by the Mast Camera of the rover itself, revealing a thin layer of dust on Curiosity's deck. In the foreground is the rover's most recent drill target, named "Stoer" after a town in Scotland near where important discoveries about early life on Earth were made in lakebed sediments.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the Mastcam. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

More information about Curiosity is online at https://www.nasa.gov/msl and https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/.

Credits

NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

ENLARGE

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