My Favourite Curiosity Pictures From The Past Decade

My Favourite Curiosity Pictures from the Past Decade

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) aka Curiosity (above) landed on Mars at 10 (earth) years ago at the exact time of posting - 5:17 UTC on August 6th, 2012. Even before its landing I've been starry eyed over the mission, and the for almost three years I've been lucky enough to get to do science operations with the rover*. In honour of a decade of roving Gale Crater, here are some of my favourite pictures. (This will be a long post.)

*Standard disclaimer that nothing in this post or on this blog for that matter is at all associated with NASA or the CSA - opinions all my own!

I would be remiss to not start out with clouds - I LOVE this image - if you've ever seen me do a talk about Mars you've probably seen this picture. During the early part of the Mars year, clouds form in the twilight which are really high in the atmosphere and so can be illuminated even after the sun has gone below the horizon. These are called noctolucent clouds, and we also get them on earth! I also love this picture because it combines the two science teams - the environmental team and the geo team.

This is a panorama from Curiosity's landing site (Bradbury landing) and shows a fairly distant-looking Mount Sharp - the central peak of Gale Crater. It took MSL nearly two 9earth) years to reach the mountain, and since then we've been climbing it, travelling through the timeline of Gale as we move from older to younger sediments.

I love a blue sunset picture. This one is from fairly early on in the mission - less than 1000 sols (martian days) in (for reference - we're on sol 3554 now). The sunsets on Mars appear blue because of the scattering properties of dust in the atmosphere. Blue light is more effectively scattered forwards from the sun, but as the sun sinks and we look through more atmosphere, the blue light can spread out a bit.

This set of images was taken during the global dust storm of 2018 (Mars year 35), the one that spelled the end of Opportunity. Luckily, Curiosity uses nuclear power, not solar, and was able to weather the storm. It's so cool to watch the crater rim in the distance disappear, and the closer ground as well. The rover got well and truly socked in.

The final image I'm going to share is this delicate little "flower". When I first saw the MAHLI image (MAHLI = Mars Hand Lens Imager) I gasped out loud. I love cool looking rocks! This one is only a few centimetres tall but I love how much it really does look like a bit of coral or a flower (it isn't - Curiosity hasn't found plants on Mars).