This is no ordinary selfie, but one that has been assembled from dozens of photographs taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera on the Rover's robotic arm.
Selfie on Mars! @MarsCuriosity pic at site where its drill took a second taste of Mount Sharp: http://t.co/A09KJq5tw8 pic.twitter.com/YrfiNxZcBb
— NASA (@NASA) February 24, 2015
Curiosity had taken self-portraits at three different sites. "Compared with the earlier Curiosity selfies, we added extra frames for this one so we could see the rover in the context of the full Pahrump Hills campaign,” Rover team member Kahryn Stack said.
The rover also helpfully tweeted a link to an older video which explains how these images are assembled.
Selfie stick not required. How I take self-portraits + why my arm isn't in the shot http://t.co/emTsloKLYK pic.twitter.com/Cd5GOrohqK
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) February 24, 2015
The Mars Science Laboratory Project, part of NASA, is using the Curiosity Rover to assess ancient habitable environments and major changes in Martian environmental conditions.
This selfie comes at a time when London gets ready for an auction “From the Earth to the Moon: Vintage NASA Photographs”, a collection of 692 images from the last four decades.
While NASA routinely releases images for its many missions, these are but a fraction of those held in its extensive archives and amongst private collectors.
And if you want to look up what the Curiosity Rover has been up to lately, do follow the link in this tweet:
Here there be science. New #selfie is annotated with recent investigation targets http://t.co/1ZlJfisJaE pic.twitter.com/SS5uAoN8HP
— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) February 24, 2015