WITH EVEN QUEEN Elizabeth getting in on the selfie business, it seems only right that inanimate objects are taking them.
NASA’s high-tech rover has celebrated its first year on Mars by taking a photograph of itself at work on the Red Planet.
Anyone who’s been paying attention may notice that it’s more than one Earth year since the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars.
In fact, it was 6 August 2012 when it touched down, making it 687 Earth days exactly – which is the equivalent of one Martian year.
The rover’s main goal was to find out whether Mars ever had the environmental conditions necessary for microbial life, which it ended up answering very quickly after it discovered a site which was once a lakebed containing the essential elemental ingredients for life.
Curiosity still has some work ahead of it, though. This map from NASA shows the route that it has taken since it landed at the Bradbury Landing site and has travelled south west.
The line in white shows the planned route ahead.
“We are getting in some long drives using what we have learned,” said Jim Erickson, the project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
“When you’re exploring another planet, you expect surprises”.
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