NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Clicks Curiosity Mountaineering Mount Sharp
2 mins read

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Clicks Curiosity Mountaineering Mount Sharp

Far above the Martian surface, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which passed over Mount Sharp – the prominent mountain on Mars on June 5th, has successfully clicked the rare view of NASA’s another Mars explorer – Curiosity Rover mounting the Mount Sharp said the agency in its latest press release.

Using the most high-end and powerful telescope ever sent to the Martian Surface, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA has managed to catch an exceptional glimpse of the Curiosity Rover, climbing the Martian surface this month. The Curiosity Rover, while climbing the Mount Sharp amid the rough mountainside terrain, caught by the cameras of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, said NASA. On this context, the US-based space agency also has published the spectacular picture, clicked by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which exhibited the view of Curiosity, exploring Mount Sharp. As the picture was taken far from the surface of Mars, Curiosity looks like a tiny, blue dot in the image.

The car-sized Curiosity rover is currently climbing towards Mars’ lower Mount Sharp as it is its next destination. In the enhanced colour image taken by the obiter’s High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, the rover seems like a blue blob next to a background, loaded with dark sand and tan rocks. The artificial colour of the picture is clearly showing the differences between the materials and minerals, presented on the surface of Mars. Amid all those materials, Curiosity appears much bluer than it used to look.

The colour image was taken from an approximate distance of 169 miles. The picture is a combined visual treat of three wavelength bands including red, blue-green and infrared. The wavelengths used in the film are setting the materials on Mars’s surface apart, and also producing a bright and different prospect what the human eye could ever see. As said by NASA’s officials, in reality, the Curiosity rover has a shade akin to an unpolished metallic car. But the false-colour amalgamations are making the Curiosity Rover, whose approximate longitude is 10 feet and width 9 feet, dazzle as a bright blue dot in the topography of pallor rocks and scraps of shady sand.

As said by NASA, the view was framed on 5th June 2017, just two months ahead of the fifth anniversary of the landing of Curiosity next to the Mount Sharp. Curiosity landed near the Mount Sharp on August 6, 2012, and this year, NASA will celebrate five years anniversary of its successful touchdown.

Apart from the view of Curiosity Rover, the onboard camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter also has clicked the pictures of Viking and Phoenix Landers of NASA as well as the view of a Russian amateur spacecraft – Mars 3 during its pass-by move.