Housedon Hill Mosaic Taken by Curiosity’s ChemCam

This mosaic shows various scenes captured from a location called "Housedon Hill" by the ChemCam instrument aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover between September 9 and October 23, 2020 (Sols 2878 and 2921). ChemCam uses a laser to zap rock and soil, then studies the resulting vapor to determine the composition of different material from a distance. The instrument's Remote Microscopic Imager camera takes black-and-white images so that scientists can look closely at the material before and after laser zaps.

Early in the mission, the team discovered that the camera can be used like a telescope, looking at distant horizons rather than nearby rock textures. While parked at a location nicknamed "Mary Anning," they used the camera to repeatedly take pictures of the landscape, assembling them all into this long mosaic. This image includes the mosaic as well as several detail shots.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French national space agency (CNES), the University of Toulouse and the French national research agency (CNRS).

For more information about Curiosity, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/msl or https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html.