In the video: Here’s what a day on Mars captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover looks like

NASA’s Curiosity rover, stationed for two weeks during Mars’ solar conjunction in November 2023, used its front and rear black-and-white Hazcams to capture 12 hours of a Martian day. The rover’s shadow is visible on the surface in these Front Hazcam images.

Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech

At the beginning of November this year, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) decided to cancel sending instructions for missions it will carry out to Mars. The reason was very simple: at that time of year, Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun. “Like dancers on either side of a large bonfire, the two planets are temporarily invisible to each other,” he said. said NASA referring to solar conjunction, as this phenomenon is known in technical terms. (You can read: They detected high energies in the most distant active galactic nucleus recorded)

The risk involved in this period, which usually lasts no more than two weeks, is that NASA missions could be affected, since the hot, ionized gas that is expelled from the solar corona “could corrupt the radio signals sent”. from Earth to NASA ships on Mars, causing unexpected behavior.”

Although the activities of the various missions that NASA carries out on the Red Planet were drastically reduced in those days, the Curiosity rover team took advantage of the hours preceding the conjunction to record, for the first time, 12 hours of snapshots of a day. on Mars. The hope, the space agency said in a statement, was to “capture clouds or dust devils that could reveal more about the climate” of this planet. (Maybe you’re interested: since December 15th Colombia has trembled more than 1,200 times)

The recordings, explains NASA, began around 5:30 in the morning on November 8 this year, the 4,002nd Martian day of the mission. Curiosity’s cameras captured images until 5:30 p.m.

In the first video, which you can see below, although no “noteworthy meteorological phenomenon” is observed, “Curiosity’s silhouette changes as the day passes from morning to afternoon to evening.” at night,” says NASA. This was recorded with the front camera, pointing towards the south-east of Gediz Valliz. (You can also read: Why can’t you predict fog? Scientists are working to make it happen)

“As the sky lights up during sunrise, the shadow of the rover’s 2-meter robotic arm shifts to the left and Curiosity’s front wheels emerge from the darkness on either side of the chassis. Also visible on the left is a circular calibration target mounted on the shoulder of the robotic arm,” NASA explains about the first seconds of the video.

In the second video, captured with the rear camera, which points northwest “up the slopes of Mount Sharp to the floor of Gale Crater,” the rover’s right rear wheel is visible, along with the shadow of Curiosity’s power system. A small black artifact that appears on the left center of the video, during frame 17, is the result of a cosmic ray hitting the camera’s sensor. Likewise, the light flickering and other noises at the end of the video are the result of heat from the spacecraft’s power system hitting the Hazcam’s image sensor.” (You may be interested in: In memory of: scientists who died in 2023 )

2023-12-30 18:51:00
#video #Heres #day #Mars #captured #NASAs #Curiosity #rover