NASA’s Curiosity rover has been busy over on Mars.
Between November 24 and December 1 last year, the rover took more than 1,000 images of the planet. These exploits have now led to the highest resolution panorama of the rocky planet to date. Check it out below.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has been hanging out on Mars for the last 8 years and in that time it’s become quite the amateur photographer.
The rover has been developing its photography skills over the years. Its first panorama was snapped back in 2013 at a much lower resolution.
The latest photo provides much greater detail. Captured with a telephoto lens, the image is made up of 1.8 billion pixels. It also captured a second, lower-resolution photo. It took the rover nearly seven hours to capture both shots.
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Captured in the image is the area of Glen Torridon, near a mountain named Mout Sharp where the rover is currently exploring.
Curiosity has been on Mars since 2012 after it first left with the mission of finding potential hints of microbial life. Whilst roaming the Gale Crater, the rover discovered a lake that may have contained water billions of years ago – an environment that could have once supported life.
The rover is quite fond of taking selfies and a comparison of what the rover looked like when it first landed on Mars, verse what it looks like now (8 years later), went viral earlier this year.
Remember when a potentially hazardous asteroid came close to earth earlier this year?
Check out a video explaining the new panorama below.
