NASA’s Curiosity rover experienced an lively Thanksgiving holiday in 2019, snapping more than 1,000 photos of Mars to ship back again to Earth. This week, NASA unveiled the superb 1.8-billion-pixel 360-degree photograph that arrived from that photoshoot — the optimum-resolution panorama image of the purple world at any time taken.
Experts have invested the previous several months assembling the practically 1,200 illustrations or photos to create a single cohesive image, NASA claimed in a press release. They had been taken with the rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, applying its telephoto lens amongst November 24 and December 1, when the full mission team on Earth was off for Thanksgiving.
Although the rest of the crew relaxed, Curiosity had small to do — and it took the rare prospect to flex its photography competencies. Experts programmed the Mastcam to choose pics every single day through the same two-hour window in order to retain the lighting constant.
“Though many on our workforce had been at property experiencing turkey, Curiosity generated this feast for the eyes,” explained Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity’s venture scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
In addition to the 1.8-billion-pixel panorama that doesn’t characteristic Curiosity, the rover also captured a 650-million-pixel panorama that involves its deck and robotic arm. Both of those panoramas highlight “Glen Torridon,” the location of Mars Curiosity is now exploring inside of Gale crater.
In a video, Vasavada delves into the spectacular details captured in the picture, such as the rim of the Gale crater, a 3-mile-vast crater known as Slangpos and the rover’s tracks trailing at the rear of it.
Vasavada warned the image seems warped, similar to looking by a fisheye lens, mainly because it captures 360 levels all over the rover. “This is the first time in the course of the mission we have committed our functions to a stereo 360-diploma panorama,” he explained.