NASA has just shared one of its most impressive Mars panoramas to date. Captured by its trusty Curiosity rover, the panorama (below) of the Martian landscape comprises 44 images taken by the rover’s Mastcam. The color has been adjusted to match the lighting conditions as the human eye would see them on Earth.
Check out the view from up here! As the Curiosity rover continues to climb the flanks of Mt. Sharp, it has captured an extraordinarily clear panorama of Gale Crater’s rim…and even the lands beyond. Details:https://t.co/Zv9gQzybLO pic.twitter.com/Pjpbwvyp2c
Curiosity captured the images during its ongoing climb of Mount Sharp, with the final panorama showing the rim of Gale Crater as well as the distant landscape.
The clip shared by NASA helpfully points out the part of the crater’s rim, as well as an ancient river channel and a mountain estimated to be 57 miles (91 km) away. It also points out smaller craters and dunes.
NASA said the conditions were “exceptionally clear” at the time of Curiosity’s capture, which took place toward the end of last month.
“Dust in the air is at its lowest during Martian winter, providing Curiosity its best views all the way across the yawning crater floor from the rover’s perch in the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3.1-mile-tall (5-km-tall) mountain roughly 22 miles (35 km) from the crater rim,” NASA said.
Gale Crater is believed to have been created by a massive impact event when a comet or asteroid smashed into the Martian surface billions of years ago. The crater is about 96 miles (154 km) in diameter and around 2.8 miles (4.5 km) deep at its most extreme point, making it one of the larger craters on Mars.
Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and reached Mars in 2012. Ever since then, the rover has been exploring the Martian surface to try to determine if Mars ever had the environmental conditions that could support microbial life. The rover successfully achieved its goal by confirming that Gale Crater once contained a lake that could have hosted life.
Curiosity’s mission has been so successful that NASA expanded its objectives to include studying Mars’ climate evolution and preparing for future human exploration.
In 2021, Curiosity was joined by another NASA rover, Perseverance, although the two are around 2,330 miles (3,750 km) apart and so won’t be meeting up to exchange notes anytime soon.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.