Mars Mountain — NASA’s Curiosity Captures Gorgeous View Of Martian Peak

While scaling one of the many mountains on Mars, NASA‘s Curiosity rover captured an absolutely stunning image to mark the occasion — providing yet another fascinating glimpse at the mysterious Red Planet. While it’ll still be at least a decade before NASA lands the first humans on Mars, that hasn’t stopped scientists and astronomers from learning everything they can about the planet beforehand. Using rovers, probes, and even helicopters, remote research is being conducted constantly.

In regards to NASA’s own findings, the space organization has made substantial discoveries over the past few weeks. The InSight probe recently made a detailed interior map of Mars (the first for any planet other than Earth), Ingenuity has officially flown over one mile across the planet, and hundreds upon hundreds of pictures are regularly sent back from these robotic powerhouses. Whether it be pictures of Earth-like landscapes or peculiar rock formations, these images allow us to better understand the many intricacies of the Martain surface.

This latest picture comes from Curiosity, and it might be one of its most impressive photos yet. The picture above was captured using Curiosity’s Mast Camera (also known as the Mastcam) and showcases a 360-degree view of Mars as Curiosity scales one of the planet’s mountains. The photo shows the incline of the mountain, the challenging terrain of its surface, and a stunning view of the Mars horizon with other mountains in the distance.

Digging Deeper Into Curiosity’s Latest Mars Picture

According to NASA, the picture was captured as Curiosity was climbing Mount Sharp on July 3, 2021. Mount Sharp is a 5-mile-tall mountain on Mars and sits within the 96-mile-wide basin of the planet’s Gale Crater. Not only is Mount Sharp stunning to look at, but it’s also filled with enormous potential discoveries. As NASA explains, “The mountain’s layers in this area may reveal how the ancient environment within Gale Crater dried up over time. Similar changes are seen across the planet, and studying this region up close has been a major long-term goal for the mission.” 

It’s well-known that Mars used to be a planet filled with enormous rivers. Those dried up billions of years ago and are nowhere to be found today, but scientists have been trying to figure out what caused that change to happen. Potentially, this mountain could allow Curiosity to start putting the puzzle pieces together. Per Curiosity’s deputy project scientist, Abigail Fraeman, “The rocks here will begin to tell us how this once-wet planet changed into the dry Mars of today, and how long habitable environments persisted even after that happened.” It’ll be a while before concrete answers are revealed for those questions. In the meantime, sit back enjoy the photo for what it is, and it won’t be long before NASA has another one to share.

Source: NASA

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Joe Maring
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Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he’s happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.

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