NASA's
Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity appears as a bluish dot near
the lower right corner of this enhanced-color view from the High
Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The rover's tracks are visible extending from
the landing site, "Bradbury Landing," in the left half of the scene.
Two
bright, relatively blue spots surrounded by darker patches are where
the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft's landing jets cleared away
reddish surface dust at the landing site. North is toward the top.
For
scale, the two parallel lines of the wheel tracks are about 10 feet (3
meters) apart. HiRISE shot this image on June 27, 2013, when Curiosity
was at an outcrop called "Shaler" in the "Glenelg" area of Gale Crater.
Subsequently the rover drove away from Glenelg toward the southwest.
When HiRISE captured this view, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was
rolled for an eastward-looking angle rather than straight downward.
The
afternoon sun illuminated the scene from the western sky, so the
lighting was nearly behind the camera. Specifically, the angle from sun
to orbiter to rover was just 5.47 degrees.
This geometry hides shadows
and reveals subtle color variations. The image is one product from
HiRISE observation ESP_032436_1755. Other image products from this
observation are available at http://www.uahirise.org/ESP_032436_1755 .
HiRISE is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars
Science Laboratory projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona › Related
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