NASA Curiosity Mars Rover Selfie
Trending News: NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover Perfects The Art Of The Selfie
Why Is This Important?Because is it just me or is the Mars rover making a duck-face in that selfie?
NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars took a break from investigating active sand dunes on the red planet to take an awesome selfie.
Long Story Short
While humans haven’t made it to Mars — not without a lack of effort from Elon Musk — we’ve been able to send robots there to take the first footsteps, or rather, treadmarks. NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has been on the red planet since Aug. 6, 2012, taking samples and investigating the vast landscapes to see if any life can be supported there.
For the past two months, the car-sized mobile lab has been scooping and sieving samples of sand from a group of active sand dunes part of the Baghnold Dune Field, but stopped to take a quick selfie on Jan. 19.
The photo posted Friday by NASA is a combination of 57 images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), which is attached to Curiosity’s arm and essentially its own personal selfie-stick.
You might recall headlines Curiosity made soon after it landed on Mars in 2012 when it stumbled across an ancient riverbed.
Over the last few years, Curiosity has been a pretty active social media user, with some intriguing close-ups of the (seemingly) desolate planet.
I love sharing granular data from my mission. Usually, it's not quite this literal. New Mars close-ups. pic.twitter.com/6R2B37hkjq— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) January 20, 2016
The next step in Curiosity's investigation is to find a good place to drill and scoop up powder-samples of bedrock for NASA to study.
Ask The Big Question: Will Curiosity be the one to discover life can be supported on Mars?
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Disrupt Your Feed: Do moon landing deniers also think these NASA rovers are fake?
Drop This Fact: Curiosity's current investigation of active sand dunes is the first of its kind outside of planet Earth.