Whereas many people are on trip this week between Christmas and New Yr, the Curiosity rover on Mars is getting again to work after taking break day final month. In November, NASA’s Mars missions paused for 2 weeks throughout an occasion referred to as the Mars photo voltaic conjunction, when the solar is instantly between Earth and Mars.
That implies that any communications indicators passing between the 2 planets must cross near the cruel photo voltaic atmosphere, the place they might doubtless be degraded. To keep away from any threat of garbled communications sending harmful indicators to the rovers, NASA stopped sending instructions to each its Curiosity and Perseverance rovers till the photo voltaic conjunction handed.
Throughout this time, the rovers had been unusually inactive. The rovers usually have as a lot science and exploration packed into their schedules as potential, however for a time there, the Curiosity rover was simply hanging out on the Martian floor. To take advantage of even this chance, the rover captured the view round it utilizing its ahead and rear cameras, taking common photographs which, when strung collectively, present the development of a Martian day.
The 2 cameras are referred to as Hazcams, or Hazard-Avoidance Cameras, and because the title suggests, they’re primarily used for navigation to assist the rover keep away from harmful obstacles like sharp rocks or steep slopes. So, they solely function in black and white and are comparatively low definition. All the identical, seeing the string of 25 photographs taken between 5:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. native time on November eight offers you the soothing feeling of spending a day hanging out on Mars with Curiosity.
You possibly can see the shifting of the rover’s shadow all through the day, and within the final body of the entrance digicam video, there’s an impact that appears like snow — however that is simply as a result of sensor noise from the lengthy publicity of the picture, not any climate phenomenon. There are one other couple of attention-grabbing artifacts within the rear digicam video, like within the center when a black dot seems (attributable to a cosmic ray hitting the sensor), or on the finish when there’s what appears like a flash of sunshine which is attributable to the spacecraft’s energy system.
With the Mars photo voltaic conjunction over and Curiosity now again in common communications with Earth, the rover is again to work, taking photographs of areas referred to as Crescent Meadow and Sawtooth Peak and searching for clouds and dirt within the air.
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