Postcard from Mars: Curiosity Rover Sends Back Most Stunning Landscape Image of Red Planet | The Weather Channel – Articles from The Weather Channel |…

NASAs Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture panoramas of this scene at two times of day; blue, orange, and green colour was added to a combination of both panoramas for an artistic interpretation of the scene.

Mars has come a long way from a smaller-sized neighbour in the solar system to a poster planet of space exploration. What all the unknown mysteries that it beholds? How has it transformed to become so lifeless?

The curious world of Mars has inspired generations of space scientists to explore the red planet like never before. At present, Marslocated about 377.2 million km away from the Earthhosts three human-made visitors roaming on the rough terrains of the planetCuriosity (2012) and Perseverance (2021) by the US and Zhurong (2021) from China.

And scientists on Earth have been receiving back-to-back unique insights from the robotic visitors wandering on this alien world.

Last month, NASAs Curiosity rover beamed back some of the most stunning landscape images of the red planet. On its solo trip to Mars, the senior-most rover continues to give us back some of the most exotic looks of the red planet. It was launched a decade ago on November 26, 2011, and landed on August 6, 2012, and continues to operate under extremely harsh conditions.

The robotic eyes of Curiosity captured a stunning vista from the slope of Mars Mount Sharp or Aeolis Mons that forms at the centre of Gale Crater. The rover captured the recent images on November 16 (the 3,299th Martian day, or sol, of the mission) soon after completing one of its drives. Curiosity stops after each drive to capture a 360-degree panorama of the surrounding landscapes by standing at Mount Sharp.

Soon after receiving this stunning image, the Curiosity team instructed the rover to capture two more landscape images at different times of 8:30 a.m. and 4:10 p.m. (local Mars time). The rover snapped back the two mosaics to scientists, and the NASA team added some artistic features like colours to portray landscape features to make it even more enchanting.

Curiositys morning view of down Mount Sharp.

Curiositys afternoon view.

The official statement from NASA reads: The team was so inspired by the beauty of the landscape, they combined two versions of the black-and-white images from different times of the day and added colours to create a rare postcard from the Red Planet."

The coloured image includes blue, orange and green colours, while the original is that of a black-and-white landscape as the rover looks down from the slope. The colours depict scenes as viewed at different times of the day like morning in the blue, afternoon in orange and a combination of both in green, says NASA.

The primary objective of Curiosity mission is to explore the Gale Crater to understand the planets past and present climate and geology. Along with this, the rover also continues to hunt for potentially habitable signs and ancient life signs.

A decade later, Perseverance rover landed on the planet earlier this year to aid Curiositys mission to understand Mars better. The US space agency NASA has specifically designed the rover to seek signs of past microbial life. Its former rover InSight (2018) played a crucial role in confirming the habitable conditions. Through Perseverance, NASA has kick-started preparing for future human exploration to Mars.

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Postcard from Mars: Curiosity Rover Sends Back Most Stunning Landscape Image of Red Planet | The Weather Channel - Articles from The Weather Channel |...