While it’s little surprise that NASA’s newest Mars rover, Perseverance, gets most of the attention these days, we shouldn’t forget that Curiosity, its other rover that arrived on the red planet in 2012, is still busy exploring the Martian surface.
Keen to remind us of the fact, the space agency recently posted a dramatic image of car-sized Curiosity captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as it passed overhead at an altitude of around 180 miles.
The photographshows NASA’s roveras it climbs Mont Mercou, a broad outcrop of rocks on the northern flank of Mount Sharp close to the center of the crater. As you can see, the vehicle looks tiny and isolated in its desolate surroundings …
Curiosity has been carrying outan array of scientific researchon Mars for the last nine years. It’s also been sending home some impressive images from the Martian surface, includingselfies,panoramas, andstunning imagery of drifting clouds.
The rover even hasits own Twitter accountwith more than 4.1 million followers, allowing fans of its ongoing Mars mission to keep up to date with everything that it gets up to on the faraway planet.
Curiosity is located more than 2,000 miles from Perseverance, so there’s no chance of NASA’s two rovers bumping into each other. Perseverancelanded on Mars in February, tasked with exploring the red planet for signs of ancient life. It also brought with it Ingenuity, a small helicopter that recently became thefirst aircraft to achieve powered, controlled flighton another planet, withmore record-breaking flightsachieved since.
NASA’s two Mars rovers were also recently joined by a Chinese rover called Zhurong, which rolled off a landeronto the surface of the red planetat the weekend.
Zhurong will explore the Martian landscape for signs of ancient life and also learn more about Mars’ environment using an array of scientific tools.
The Asian giant is gettingincreasingly ambitious with its space missions. Its recent arrival on Mars saw it become only the second nation to deploy a rover on the planet after the U.S., and the third to land a spacecraft there, with only the U.S. and Russia having previously achieved the feat.
