Mars Curiosity Rover Selfie

by Ram Vasudev

Original - Not For Sale

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Dimensions

8536.000 x 6828.000 pixels

Title

Mars Curiosity Rover Selfie

Artist

Ram Vasudev

Medium

Photograph - Digital Art

Description

This is a significantly enhanced version of a self-portrait (selfie!) of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. I have modified the raw image by considerably reducing imperfections and enhancing the colors, beauty, balance and luminosity, in order to provide you a breathtaking, high quality, fine art print through this website. The original NASA dull raw capture is in public domain.

The original raw image combines dozens of exposures taken by an imaging camera during the 177th Martian day of Curiosity's exploration of Mars, plus three exposures taken on the 270th Martian day to show the two small holes surrounded by gray powder that you see in the lower-left side where the rover drilled into a targeted rock and acquired samples for analysis by on-board scientific instruments.

The rover's robot arm is not seen in the composite image. The camera is mounted on a turret at the end of the robotic arm. The component images in the composite were captured by using the wrist motions and turret rotations of the arm. The arm was positioned out of parts of the images used in the composite, so you don't see the robotic arm in the final composite.

Curiosity is a large robotic rover exploring Gale Crater on Mars. It is about the size of a Mini-Cooper (9.5 feet long, 8.9 feet wide, and 7.2 feet tall). It weighs 1,980 pounds, including 180 pounds of scientific instruments. Also called the Mars Science Laboratory, it was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 27, 2011 at 10:02 EST aboard an Atlas V rocket. It landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012 after a 563 million mile journey.

It is interesting to compare the beaten-down look of the rover now on Mars in this photo with what it looked like when it was brand new (see the image "Nasa's Curiosity Rover - Mars Science Laboratory" that I posted back in December 2013). Although it is now considerably run-down and covered with dust, the Rover's instruments continue to function perfectly and generating useful scientific data. For the scientific goals of the Rover, see the Description of my previous 2013 image.

Uploaded

December 23rd, 2015

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Viewed 926 Times  -  Last Visitor from Romeo, MI on 04/11/2024 at 10:39 PM

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