Curiosity Rover Snaps Stunning Mount Sharp Image

"The only thing more stunning than these images is the thought that Curiosity will be driving through those lower hills one day," Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada,

Have to agree with Ashwin Vasavada , looks like a perfect day to go play in the hills.
The picture was taken on on Sept. 9 but released on Friday and shows the future direction of travel for Curiosity in the coming weeks and months so eventually we will all get to play in the hills.

In the foreground of the new image, about 2 miles (3.2 km) from Curiosity's position, lies a ridge rich in hematite, a mineral form of iron oxide. Beyond the ridge lie ancient hills containing clay minerals, and behind those hills are buttes rich in sulfate minerals, NASA officials said.

"The changing mineralogy in these layers of Mount Sharp suggests a changing environment in early Mars, though all involve exposure to water billions of years ago," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. "The Curiosity team hopes to be able to explore these diverse areas in the months and years ahead.
www.space.com...

The full sized images is linked in the source above and well worth staring at for a while.

Nice pic. I thought that Curiosity was supposed to get there long ago, in the Summer of 2014 if memory serves, and hopefully the Rover will be stepping lightly around those hills soon. Still cool after all these years.

I'm throwing the dirt bikes in the truck and heading there now. Who's with me?

Seriously, that looks like dirt bike Heaven!

S&F

a reply to: gortex

I hope curiousty goes to Mt. Olympus. I wanna see some Gods. Or at least some statues of them.

Neat pics though.

a reply to: KawRider9

I'm with ya mate , I'll bring lunch

Just think of the jumps we could get with one third gravity

a reply to: Tucket

never as curiosity is over 5000klm away from Olympus and at its speed would take
20 years to get there!

thats a wonderful picture!

Question though

How did they invent a battery that can last all these years roving around on mars, doing testing, moving, taking pictures etc....but I cant keep my cell phone charged more than a day? lol

Great picture.

Nice blue sky, too!

a reply to: ManBehindTheMask

Curiosity rover has a nuclear power source , more precisely a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator.

The nuclear generator delivers both heat and 110 watts of steady electric power from an array of iridium capsules holding a ceramic form of plutonium dioxide. The heat is piped through the Curiosity carried by liquid Freon. Thermoelectric devices on the generator convert the heat into electricity with no moving parts. Idaho National Laboratory, which designed and tested the energy system, says it can operate for years.
www.technologyreview.com...

originally posted by: gortex

"The only thing more stunning than these images is the thought that Curiosity will be driving through those lower hills one day," Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada,

The full sized images is linked in the source above and well worth staring at for a while.

That's a cracker of a picture, had that been Donegal, there would be someone geeking round a rock

Here's a link to your own picture at ATS with a magnifier, saved me wading through Space.com's tedious loading.

files.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: gortex

"The only thing more stunning than these images is the thought that Curiosity will be driving through those lower hills one day," Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada,

Have to agree with Ashwin Vasavada , looks like a perfect day to go play in the hills.
The picture was taken on on Sept. 9 but released on Friday and shows the future direction of travel for Curiosity in the coming weeks and months so eventually we will all get to play in the hills.

In the foreground of the new image, about 2 miles (3.2 km) from Curiosity's position, lies a ridge rich in hematite, a mineral form of iron oxide. Beyond the ridge lie ancient hills containing clay minerals, and behind those hills are buttes rich in sulfate minerals, NASA officials said.

"The changing mineralogy in these layers of Mount Sharp suggests a changing environment in early Mars, though all involve exposure to water billions of years ago," NASA officials wrote in the same statement. "The Curiosity team hopes to be able to explore these diverse areas in the months and years ahead.
www.space.com...

The full sized images is linked in the source above and well worth staring at for a while.

Incredible photo. Of another planet surface...

The mind boggles. Go NASA!

That beautiful blue sky!

a reply to: smurfy

Thanks for the full picture mate , nice one

Really nice picture..

Love me some Tatooine curiosity pictures.

I remember years ago when all the pictures from Mars featured very red landscapes and reddish brown skies.

Wonder what the original looked like.....?


Towers
Water
Pyramids

originally posted by: ManBehindTheMask
thats a wonderful picture!

Question though

How did they invent a battery that can last all these years roving around on mars, doing testing, moving, taking pictures etc....but I cant keep my cell phone charged more than a day? lol

I don't think you would appreciate a chunk of red hot (and highly radioactive) Plutonium in your cell phone.

~~~

On the topic of this image, I hope people will realise that it's been colour-balanced to imitate lighting conditions on Earth. The original images from that camera look redder (with the slight green-ish cast that comes with raw images): mars.nasa.gov...

NASA haven't made the raw high-rez version of that vista available yet, so the white-balanced image is all we have at the moment.

a reply to: gortex

Curiosity Rover Snaps Stunning Mount Sharp Image - Since when has Mars sky been that blue? Why is it blue?

We have always been told its a reddish colur. Are revealing the truth about mars here or are they revealing the lies of the past?, it cant be bothways

originally posted by: Azureblue
Curiosity Rover Snaps Stunning Mount Sharp Image - Since when has Mars sky been that blue? Why is it blue?

Because it is a composite image with adjustments:

The colors are adjusted so that rocks look approximately as they would if they were on Earth, to help geologists interpret the rocks. This "white balancing" to adjust for the lighting on Mars overly compensates for the absence of blue on Mars, making the sky appear light blue and sometimes giving dark, black rocks a blue cast.

Mount Sharp Comes In Sharply

a reply to: Azureblue

Curiosity Rover Snaps Stunning Mount Sharp Image - Since when has Mars sky been that blue? Why is it blue?

Well NASA's line is as posted by MissVocalcord above but back in the Spirit rover days they helpfully put a calibration tool on the rover which showed (in my opinion) the pictures were saturated red.


When I colour corrected the Spirit images to the calibration tool they looked not dissimilar to the Curiosity pictures of today , perhaps there is a new spirit of honesty with these images.

I guess we would only really know for sure if we were there to see for ourselves.