[imagesource: NASA]
We’ve all been tracking Perseverance’s mission on Mars since her successful landing in late February.
So far she’s been killing it, most recently sending back her first high-resolution panorama, stitched together using 79 images.
With everything that’s going on with NASA’s most technically advanced rover to date, it’s easy to forget that Percy isn’t alone up there.
Trudging around, doing her own work, is Curiosity, who was launched from Cape Canaveral on 26 November 2011, and arrived on the Red Planet in 2012.
She has traversed the terrain in Gale Crater and climbed the slopes of Mount Sharp, relaying data on Mars’ geologic past.
There was a slight hitch back in January when she was briefly frozen in place after a system failure but soon recovered, evident in her most recent gift sent back to Earth.
You’re looking at a panoramic selfie in front of an impressive rock formation that scientists have dubbed Mont Mercou:
And you thought your Instagram selfies were impressive.
Curiosity shared the selfie on her Twitter account – she’s killing it on social media with upwards of 4,1 million followers.
Wish you were here! This selfie was taken in front of “Mont Mercou,” a rock formation that’s 20ft (6m) tall. It’s made up of 60 images from my MAHLI camera and 11 images from my Mastcam. Look close enough to spot a new drill hole – my 30th sample to date. https://t.co/3U5ZVNyO2t pic.twitter.com/mFMVjiTCvF
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) March 30, 2021
NASA elaborated on the sample mentioned in the tweet, and the rock formation in the selfie.
France’s Mont Mercou is located near the village of Nontron in the southeast of the country. The team chose Nontron-related nicknames for this part of the Red Planet because Mars orbiters detected nontronite, a type of clay mineral found close to Nontron, in the region.
Surface missions assign nicknames to landmarks to provide the mission’s team members a common way to refer to rocks, soils, and other geologic features of interest.
Curiosity’s drill turned the sample into powder before pouring it into instruments inside the rover so the science team could get a better understanding of the rock’s composition and what clues it might offer about Mars’ past.
If you’d like to know more about her journey so far, I’ll leave you with a documentary by SpaceRip, released late last year.
She’s a trooper.
[source:nasa]
