While much of us are on getaway today in between Christmas and New Year, the Curiosity rover on Mars is returning to work after taking some time off last month. In November, NASA’s Mars objectives stopped briefly for 2 weeks throughout an occasion called the Mars solar combinationwhen the sun is straight in between Earth and Mars.
That suggests that any interactions signals passing in between the 2 worlds would need to pass near to the severe solar environment, where they would likely be broken down. To prevent any danger of garbled interactions sending out unsafe signals to the rovers, NASA stopped sending out commands to both its Curiosity and Perseverance rovers up until the solar combination passed.
Interest 12-hour View of Mars (Front Hazcam)
Throughout this time, the rovers were uncommonly non-active. The rovers normally have as much science and expedition loaded into their schedules as possible, however for a time there, the Curiosity rover was simply hanging out on the Martian surface area. To take advantage of even this chance, the rover recorded the view around it utilizing its forward and rear video cameras, taking routine images which, when strung together, reveal the development of a Martian day.
The 2 video cameras are called Hazcams, or Hazard-Avoidance Cameras, and as the name recommends, they are mainly utilized for navigation to assist the rover prevent hazardous challenges like sharp rocks or high slopes. They just run in black and white and are fairly low meaning. All the exact same, seeing the string of 25 images taken in between 5:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. regional time on November 8 provides you the calming sensation of investing a day hanging out on Mars with Curiosity.
Interest 12-Hour View of Mars (Rear Hazcam)
You can see the moving of the rover’s shadow throughout the day, and in the extremely last frame of the front cam video, there’s a result that appears like snow– however this is simply due to sensing unit sound from the long direct exposure of the image, not any weather condition phenomenon. There are another number of intriguing artifacts in the rear video camera video, like in the middle when a black dot appears (triggered by a cosmic ray striking the sensing unit), or at the end when there’s what appears like a flash of light which is triggered by the spacecraft’s power system.
With the Mars solar combination over and Curiosity now back in routine interactions with Earth, the rover is back to worktaking pictures of areas called Crescent Meadow and Sawtooth Peak and searching for clouds and dust in the air.
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Georgina is the Digital Trends area author, covering human area expedition, planetary science, and cosmology. She …
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