Curiosity looks ahead at very rough terrain higher on Mount Sharp
Click for full image.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken on February 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. The area it covers is indicated by the rectangle on the panorama above, which has been cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here. That panorama was created from 46 photos taken by the rover’s right navigation camera on that same day.
Those rough small peaks are higher on Mount Sharp, though far below its summit. The summit itself is not visible, and in fact has never been visible to Curiosity since it landed on Mars in August 2012. The peak is about 26 miles to the south and about 16,000 feet higher up, with much of the mountain in the way.
These small, rough peaks are in an area that the rover will likely never go, as shown in the overview map below.
Click for interactive map.
The blue dot to the right marks Curiosity’s position. The green dot marked its position two weeks ago, which also shows how slowly the rover is creeping up the mountain in the very rocky terrain of Gediz Vallis. Though Curiosity is making progress, it must pick its way carefully in order to reduce any further damage to its already damaged wheels. This means the science team can only do short traverses each time.
The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the picture above, while the orange lines indicate the area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line indicats the rover’s planned future route.
The rough peaks in the picture above sit south and behind the 400-foot-high Kukenan peak that presently hovers to the rover’s east, and have only become visible recently as the rover has climbed higher and further south.
This terrain is also on the east side of Gediz Vallis. The science team instead plans to send the rover to the west, going up in a parallel slot canyon to Gediz that appears less rough.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for full image.
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken on February 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. The area it covers is indicated by the rectangle on the panorama above, which has been cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here. That panorama was created from 46 photos taken by the rover’s right navigation camera on that same day.
Those rough small peaks are higher on Mount Sharp, though far below its summit. The summit itself is not visible, and in fact has never been visible to Curiosity since it landed on Mars in August 2012. The peak is about 26 miles to the south and about 16,000 feet higher up, with much of the mountain in the way.
These small, rough peaks are in an area that the rover will likely never go, as shown in the overview map below.
Click for interactive map.
The blue dot to the right marks Curiosity’s position. The green dot marked its position two weeks ago, which also shows how slowly the rover is creeping up the mountain in the very rocky terrain of Gediz Vallis. Though Curiosity is making progress, it must pick its way carefully in order to reduce any further damage to its already damaged wheels. This means the science team can only do short traverses each time.
The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the picture above, while the orange lines indicate the area covered by the panorama. The red dotted line indicats the rover’s planned future route.
The rough peaks in the picture above sit south and behind the 400-foot-high Kukenan peak that presently hovers to the rover’s east, and have only become visible recently as the rover has climbed higher and further south.
This terrain is also on the east side of Gediz Vallis. The science team instead plans to send the rover to the west, going up in a parallel slot canyon to Gediz that appears less rough.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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