The NASA rover “Curiosity” sends a new image from Mars. On it: a man-made device in the middle of the red Martian landscape.
Washington DC – The NASA rover “Curiosity” has been investigating Mars since the summer of 2012 and is known for occasionally sending selfies from the red planet to Earth. Now it’s that time again and the US space agency Nasa has published the latest image of Mars – in two versions. The rover “Curiosity” can be seen on it, surrounded by the reddish rock, to which Mars owes its nickname “red planet”.
The picture clearly shows the destination that the Mars rover “Curiosity” will head for next: “Maria Gordon Notch”, a U-shaped opening on the left side of the picture. The image, which shows the structure of the Martian surface and also the sun in the sky, was taken on November 20, 2021, the 3303rd Mars day of the rover. The 360-degree panorama consists of a total of 81 images that were recorded by the rover instrument “Mars Hand Lens Imager” (MAHLI) at the end of the robot arm.
Nasa rover “Curiosity” sends a new image from Mars
The NASA rover “Curiosity” has been exploring the Gale crater since landing in August 2012 in order to search for clues to earlier life on Mars. Images that the Mars rover “Curiosity” or its “colleague” “Perseverance”, which landed in February 2021, send to earth repeatedly cause a sensation. And not necessarily because of scientific knowledge or the beauty of Mars. Occasionally people recognize things in the images of the red planet that shouldn’t exist there – for example a floating spoon, a dancing woman or “partially buried skeletons” on the Martian floor.
Humans see impossible things in images of Mars
This is the phenomenon of pareidolia, which allows people to recognize known things in the unknown. This also includes, for example, a face on the moon or figures in cloud formations. Behind this is a kind of “auto-completion” in the brain.
Sometimes, however, videos from Mars also show something man-made: a breathtaking flight of the small Mars helicopter “Ingenuity”, for example. It is the first aircraft to fly on a planet beyond Earth. The “Perseverance” rover continued to cause a stir: shortly after its arrival on Mars, it solved a great mystery. (tab)
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