Jump to content

File:PIA19803-MarsCuriosityRover-AeolisMons-20150411.jpg

Page contents not supported in other languages.
This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Original file (7,765 × 2,000 pixels, file size: 2.26 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Summary

Description
English: PIA19803: Curiosity Rover's View of Alluring Martian Geology Ahead

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19803

A southward-looking panorama combining images from both cameras of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument on NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover shows diverse geological textures on Mount Sharp.

Three years after landing on Mars, the mission is investigating this layered mountain for evidence about changes in Martian environmental conditions, from an ancient time when conditions were favorable for microbial life to the much-drier present.

Gravel and sand ripples fill the foreground, typical of terrains that Curiosity traversed to reach Mount Sharp from its landing site. Outcrops in the midfield are of two types: dust-covered, smooth bedrock that forms the base of the mountain, and sandstone ridges that shed boulders as they erode. Rounded buttes in the distance contain sulfate minerals, perhaps indicating a change in the availability of water when they formed. Some of the layering patterns on higher levels of Mount Sharp in the background are tilted at different angles than others, evidence of complicated relationships still to be deciphered.

The scene spans from southeastward at left to southwestward at right. The component images were taken on April 10 and 11, 2015, the 952nd and 953rd Martian days (or sols) since the rover's landing on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, UTC (Aug. 5, PDT). Images in the central part of the panorama are from Mastcam's right-eye camera, which is equipped with a 100-millimeter-focal-length telephoto lens. Images used in outer portions, including the most distant portions of the mountain in the scene, were taken with Mastcam's left-eye camera, using a wider-angle, 34-millimeter lens.

A poster with annotations about some features in this image is online at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/files/mep/CuriosityPoster.pdf. Curiosity's Sol 952 location, relative to prior and subsequent drives, is mapped at http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=7400.

Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the rover's Mastcam. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

Photojournal Note: Also available is the full resolution TIFF file PIA19803_full.tif. This file may be too large to view from a browser; it can be downloaded onto your desktop by right-clicking on the previous link and viewed with image viewing software.
Date
Source http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA19803.jpg
Author NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Licensing

Public domain This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted". (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)
Warnings:

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

11 April 2015

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current15:54, 8 August 2015Thumbnail for version as of 15:54, 8 August 20157,765 × 2,000 (2.26 MB)DrbogdanUser created page with UploadWizard

The following 2 pages use this file:

Global file usage

The following other wikis use this file: