Martian Jubilee Curiosity: A Whole Year on the Red Planet

Jubilee Self Curiosity

Since Curiosity is on Mars, the Martian is celebrating its anniversary. Today is exactly the Martian year (687 Earth days) since the landing of the rover on the surface of the planet.

The jubilee was celebrated at NASA by creating a festive selfie for the Martian reptiloid rover. Selfies, as usual, created from many individual photos taken by the device. How to create such photos, on Habré already written, below there is a video with an explanation.
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This is how the rover takes pictures of itself:



And here is a brief report from the team:




The path traversed by the rover is marked in red. The white line is the path that the rover will pass in the near future.

It is worth recalling that the main task of the rover was to determine the possibility of the existence of conditions suitable for the emergence of life. That is - the presence in the past of a suitable atmosphere, liquid water and other conditions. Almost immediately it turned out that yes, the climate and atmosphere of ancient Mars were suitable for maintaining life.

So, back in August 2012, Curiosity discovered an ancient river bed at the landing site. Next to the landing site, an area called Yellowknife Bay was investigated, where the rover, after a detailed survey of the terrain, laser spectroscopy and soil sampling, was able to give a clear answer "yes" to the question whether the conditions in the Gale crater were suitable (in the distant past of Mars) for the existence of life.

In addition, an important goal was and is to measure the level of radiation background of the Red Planet. This information is vital for planning future manned missions to Mars.

Via nasa