Mars image provides vista of key sites visited by Curiosity

A panoramic image that NASA's Curiosity rover took from a mountainside ridge on Mars provides a sweeping vista of the key sites visited since the rover's 2012 landing, the US space agency said.

The view from "Vera Rubin Ridge" on the north flank of Mount Sharp encompasses much of the 18-kilometre route the rover has driven from its landing site, all inside Gale Crater, NASA said.

One hill on the northern horizon is about 85 kilometres away, well outside of the crater, though most of the scene's horizon is the crater's northern rim, roughly one-third that distance away and two kilometres above the rover.
 

Curiosity's Mast Camera, or Mastcam, took the component images of the panorama three months ago while the rover paused on the northern edge of Vera Rubin Ridge.

The mission has subsequently approached the southern edge of the ridge and examined several outcrop locations along the way.

Last week, the Curiosity team on Earth received copious new images from the rover through a record-setting relay by NASA's MAVEN orbiter - surpassing a gigabit of data during a single relay session from Mars for the first time in history.

The team is preparing to resume use of Curiosity's drill for acquiring powdered rock samples to be analysed by laboratory instruments inside the rover, more than a year after the most recent of the 15 times the drill has pulled sample material from Martian rocks, NASA said.

"Even though Curiosity has been steadily climbing for five years, this is the first time we could look back and see the whole mission laid out below us," said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

"From our perch on Vera Rubin Ridge, the vast plains of the crater floor stretch out to the spectacular mountain range that forms the northern rim of Gale Crater," Vasavada said.

The rover photographed the scene shortly before northern Mars' winter solstice, a season of clear skies, gaining a sharp view of distant details.