Curiosity Has Simply Despatched Again a Bleak Picture of Its Lonely View on Mars

Curiosity is climbing. Within the Gale Crater it calls dwelling, the Mars rover has been making its means up an eroded pediment known as the Central Butte.

It is finding out the weather-worn layers of rock across the base of Mount Sharp, which towers from the centre of the crater. But it surely’s not simply close-ups of rock that characteristic within the postcards Curiosity sends again to Earth.

In between staring on the floor, the rover additionally fixes its robotic eyes on the Martian horizon. The picture above was taken utilizing the rover’s Proper Navigation Digicam B on November 1, or Sol 2573. It reveals the view again in the direction of the crater’s edge.

Within the foreground, the butte gently slopes in the direction of the mountain. Within the distance, the rim of the Gale Crater – created in an enormous meteorite affect billions of years in the past – rises from the dusty haze.

The picture appears to drive dwelling the sheer isolation of Curiosity’s mission – after the unhappy shutdown of Alternative, Curiosity is now the one rover working on Mars (InSight is a stationary lander).

However the instrument has no time to be idle and ponder its lonely destiny.

Central Butte picture taken 1 November or Sol 2572. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The Central Butte is deeply geologically attention-grabbing, with layers of sedimentary rock that maintain clues to the area’s water within the distant previous. Curiosity will probably be finding out these sedimentary layers to attempt to gauge their extent.

Curiosity’s devices are additionally investigating rock variations within the area – there are some completely different colors within the rock that counsel a number of stratigraphic items. Information taken by Curiosity will assist to characterise these items, and the way they could be associated to one another.

The rover can even take photographs of a area on the prime of the butte – too tough for the rover to succeed in, however properly inside imaging distance.

“In spite of everything of those observations, Curiosity will begin driving across the butte to take a look at it from the opposite aspect,” wrote planetary geologist Kristen Bennett of america Geological Survey on NASA’s Mars Exploration web site.

“We count on to proceed having wonderful views of Central Butte at our subsequent cease!”