Curiosity’s 360-Degree Panorama of ‘Avanavero’ Drill Site

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to take this 360-degree panorama of at the “Avanavero” drill site. The panorama is made up of 127 individual images taken on June 20, 2022, the 3,509th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, and stitched together back on Earth. The color has been adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would perceive them on Earth.

At this location, Curiosity used the drill on its robotic arm to collect a rock sample for analysis by laboratory instruments inside the vehicle. It has collected more than three dozen such samples in its decade on the Red Planet.

In the center of the panorama is a gap between two hills – nicknamed “Paraitepuy Pass” – that Curiosity is currently driving through; beyond it is a layered sulfate-bearing region, which represents a drier, saltier era in the history of Mount Sharp, the 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain the rover has been ascending since 2014.

Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam.

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