CURIOSITY CAPTURES STUNNING NEW INTERACTIVE MARS PANORAMA

An incredible interactive self-portrait has been taken by the Curiosity rover on Mars revealing a wonderful insight into this distant world. The panorama was taken in the Yellowknife Bay region within the gale creator, an area believed to have been flooded with water in the distant past of the planet.

This area is in fact the first area in human history where a rover has drilled into the surface of another planet.
If you look closely at the ground in front of the rover you can see two small grey holes on the Martian surface, this is a shallow drill test hole and a sample collection hole, and both are 1.6 centimetres in diameter.

The panoramic image taken is comprised of many images taken from two separate cameras on the rover that have been stitched together. The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) mounted on top of a robotic arm was used to capture the self-portrait of the rover but excluded any images that show the arm itself, resulting in a strange illusion that the picture was taken by something else, this is not the case. This camera took 66 images. The Mastcam was then used to take the panoramic landscape frames and comprises of 130 images.

The portrait and landscape photographs are then cleverly woven together to create an awe inspiring window into the surface of another planet.

Thanks to this incredible achievement, most of the human species can witness the exploration of another world; a new age of discovery has begun.

“Science is a collaborative enterprise spanning the generations, when it permits us to see the far side of some new horizon, we remember those who prepared the way, seeing for them also” -Carl Sagan