NASA’s Curiosity rover just recently
sent back a self-portrait showing the rover itself and the landscape
surrounding it. The portrait isn’t just one photo, but 54 individual
photos all stitched together. The photos were taken by an extended
arm with a camera pointing back at the rover, so you could even think
of it as a panorama of Facebook self-photos, but without the
duckface.
Curiosity’s self-portrait is designed
to give mission engineers the ability to check on the status of the
rover, but it also provides a very cool look at the Martian
landscape. The left side of the picture reveals four “scoop
scars,” where the rover scooped up dirt for analysis.
If you want to take a look at the
individual shots that were used to make the high resolution photo,
NASA has provided those as well.
