Follow
Curiosity managed to snap a few shots of the great sand dunes found on Mars.
In its journey to study the surface of The Red Planet, Martian Rover snaps spectacular photos of sand dunes. It’s been some time now since the little rover, nicknamed Curiosity (a very suitable name for a space explorer) has taken to the surface of Mars in order to provide accurate information regarding some of Mars’s natural formations.
This can be only construed as being the first step taken on the road to send a human crew to study Mars in more detail. But for now, we will have to settle with the little droid that spends its time scouring through rocks and sand, searching for clues as to the planet’s past.
Over the last few days, Curiosity has observed from a distance a couple of sand dunes, which, according to scientists are part of the High dune, a sand formation that belongs to the Bagnold dunes, a larger formation of sand.
A few days have elapsed since the rover took the first pictures of the martian sand dunes. After doing quite a bit of travelling, Curiosity was able to approach the great sand dunes and snap a couple of pictures on the way. The picture provided to us with the courtesy of NASA depicts several tracks left on the sand dune by the roaming rover.
According to the scientists in charge of this project, the pictures transmitted by the marauding Martian rover are the first one which can actually provide some clues as to the formation of the great sand dunes. It could very well be that these are not the last photos we will see featuring the great sand formations because the rover will stick around for a while, studying various formations and taking sand samples.
The image snapped by rover’s built-in camera is actually a collection of other pictures, all rolled together in order to form a single image. According to the project leader, the pictures were taken on the 27th of November. Also, during its visit in this region, Curiosity was able to take additional pictures depicting several Martian curiosities. Thus, the roaming rover was able to relay back to Earth several interesting photos of a many petrified dunes. Those pictures were taken much earlier, in the first few days of August.
As mentioned, Curiosity will stick around for a while to gather sand samples and to perform certain analysis regarding the composition of the NASA. Moreover, this is not the first time NASA has taken a peek at the sand dunes. Many observations have been made from Mars’s orbit, including the fact that the dunes are capable of moving with a speed of one metre per year.
Photo credits:www.wikipedia.org
