Curiosity, the vehicle of the United States Aerospace Agency, NASA, that landed on Mars on 2012, turns 3, 09 suns (Martian days) exploring the surface of the red planet.
Although NASA is preparing to place another rover – the Perseverance – on Mars next February, Curiosity has not stopped hard at work since it touched down on Martian ground in equatorial crater Gale.
Here is a selection of images, compiled by the mission’s science team that, in their own words, record the main findings of Curiosity on Mars .
The whole team breathed with relief when we downloaded these images in June of 2019, despite the fact that Mars was going through a period b Dusty astante.
That moment marked the restart of the vehicle’s drilling operations. “Duluth” was the first rock sample successfully drilled (in the center of the image) since October 2016.
By June 2019, the engineers at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) had planned and tested a new technique that allowed us to get back to the crucial drilling task, without which our work would have been delayed.
Every two Martian years (1 Martian year = 800 Earth days) near the stationary equinoxes, the trajectories of the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos pass in front of the Sun, as captured by Curiosity.
Here you see the diameter of 24 kilometers of Phobos in transit in front of the Sun on Martian day (sun) 2359.
He step lasted about 35 seconds. Accurate timing of these transits helps scientists understand the tidal interactions between Phobos and Mars.
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A tiny amount of water vapor in Mars’s atmosphere can form clouds, especially during the colder times of the year and around high peaks.
Many times during its mission, Curiosity has observed thin clouds overhead. But during the sun 2410, was able to capture a special type of clouds that form at high altitude, in this case some 31 kilometers above the surface.
These clouds are called “noctilucent” because they remain illuminated even after sunset has occurred on the Martian surface.
This impressive panoramic view is of the highest resolution – 1.800 million pixels – never taken on the surface of Mars, at the end of 2020, from the Torridon Valley.
Because the preparation of these panoramas require numerous photos (this mosaic includes more than 1. 09 telephotographs) for many working days, we do not always have the opportunity to produce them.
We had been studying the clay-rich rocks in the Torridon Valley, which we named after an important region of ancient sediments in Scotland.
In the sun 2784, Curiosity paused to take a family portrait with Earth and its planetary neighbors.
In the foreground you can see the silhouette of a ravine on Mars; while in the sky you can see both Venus and Earth (“Earth”, in the photo) that appear as stars in the dusty twilight sky.
In the summer of 2020, the Curiosity science team began driving the rover to new and higher regions of Mount Sharp, where it will explore rich rocks in sulfate minerals.
As Mount Sharp was formed by layers of sediment deposited by water and wind, the rocks are more recent as you climb .
Sulfate minerals in this region may have formed when Mars changed from humid conditions – conducive to the formation of clay – to more arid conditions that can leave salts such as sulfates.
In the sun 2696, Curiosity completed the steepest path of its mission, when it ascended the sandy slope of the foot of Greenheugh Mountain, a wide flat surface covered with sedimentary rock.
The probe took these images in the sun 2729, when he looked through the layers of sedimentary rock and back over the lower Torridon Valley region.
We all know Mars as the red planet, this is how we see it in the night sky. However, just by drilling a little inside, Mars can be very different.
We have drilled successfully 29 times up to now and the sediments reveal a range of colors , from red blood to grayish blue, reflecting the minerals and fluids that have come into contact with the ancient rocks.
Drilling like this allows us to go beyond the rusted surface that has been most exposed to cosmic radiation.
Curiosity in isolation in Glasgow. Here we take a photo of the Curiosity rover with the HiRISE high-resolution camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Each of the pixels represents one 29 centimeters, so we can detect the vehicle quite well in the center of the visual field.
We had just finished drilling in a place we call Glasgow. Due to confinement from the pandemic, much more of the vehicle’s operations were conducted with staff working from home .
But after eight years terrestrial -more than three Martian years- and 29 drilled holes, we keep working very good.
The HiRISE image covers a region called the foot of Greenheugh Mountain, part of the slopes of Mount Sharp to where we will be driving slowly over the next three years of an extended mission.
It is in this next phase of the mission that we hope to find a different type of environment than we have seen in previous parts of the mission, with many sulfate minerals.
In today’s climate with no rain, dust accumulates on the surface of Mars. The winds generated by the sun’s rays that heat the ground can form large wind eddies known as vortices.
These are mostly invisible, but when a strong vortex passes over a dusty surface , the particles it lifts reveal their shape.
This animation is made from photos taken over four minutes in the sun 2847 and caught a whirlwind at a distance of one to one and a half kilometers from the vehicle.
The whirlpool is about five meters wide and at least 73 meters.
Holes drilled in honor of 19th century paleontologist Mary Anning. Curiosity took her most recent selfie Jan l sun 23973 to celebrate the successful drilling of three holes in the rock block in front.
The first two holes were named in honor of Mary Anning, the 19th-century paleontologist whose finds on the cliffs of south-west England contributed to the understanding of prehistoric marine life on Earth.
The material from these two holes was used in two “wet chemistry” experiments, in which it was mixed with liquid chemicals to extract the organic molecules that could be preserved in the rock.
The rocks in this place were formed by sediments washed away by ancient streams and lakes. The humid environment and the presence of organic molecules in various rocks studied by Curiosity suggest that the Mars of old was habitable and capable of sustaining life, if it ever had it.
The third hole was drilled to study the dark nodules visible in the corner of the stem block.
A Martian day, or sun, lasts 24 hours and 39 minutes . Number 3.000 mission sun Curiosity is fulfilled this 12 from January. The robot landed on the planet on August 6, 2012.
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