The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the American space agency, NASA, recently published a panoramic video offering us to admire the surface of the red planet at 360°, thanks to the images captured by the Mars exploration rover Curiosity. The latter has just celebrated its four years of presence on Mars.
After four years of exploring the planet Mars, it was well worth a little panoramic! If originally, the duration of the Curiosity mission was set at one Martian year, or 687 Earth (solar) days as part of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, the rover is indeed still operational, and in four years , Curiosity traveled eight miles over the steep, obstacle-strewn terrain that is the surface of Mars.
It is precisely this surface that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) invites us to admire with this panoramic video recently published by the American agency, filmed at 360°. The images were captured on August 5 in the region called « Murray Buttes », located around Mount Sharp, which rises 5.4 km from the Martian surface. Weighing close to 900 kilos, Curiosity carries many scientific and exploration instruments such as the Mastcam, a set of two cameras fixed to the top of the rover’s mast, which was used to capture these images.
As part of the Mars 2020 mission, a new NASA rover is expected to take off for the Red Planet during the summer of 2020 and arrive at its destination in February 2021. Mars 2020 is a milestone in the history of NASA’s exploration of the planet Mars with the goal of determining if life ever existed there and bringing us closer to our goal of one day sending humans to Earth. red planet declared on this subject the American space agency last month.
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