Submitted by Pluto_and_Charon t3_y8e3al in space
Comments
Still_too_soon t1_iszo5cx wrote
Congratulations on getting that job, buddy.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_iszoebl wrote
Thank you! It's more like a student internship than a job ;)
crosstherubicon t1_it04ntq wrote
Who cares, I’d be happy just to be in the building with a mop and bucket!
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it05nip wrote
It's all virtual/remote actually, it's only in the first month or so after landing that JPL actually flies out all the people to California. But yeah it's awesome. I'm doing it alongside my PhD.
crosstherubicon t1_it0hmn3 wrote
Brilliant, I'm rather envious. What's your PhD subject?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it110y4 wrote
I did my undergraduate degree in Geology and my PhD subject is Planetary Science. I am studying Mars, although not using rover data. My research considers Mars globally and is trying to better understand just how long Mars was habitable for and what the ancient environment was like. The time period I study (the Noachian) actually predates the crater lakes being studied by Curiosity and Perseverance by about 100-200 million years.
apathytheynameismeh t1_it1idve wrote
This is a cool thing. I hope you get to see and do some cool stuff (outside and within the realms of what geology allows)
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2xayd wrote
Thank you I hope so to! Perseverance is currently exploring a delta, where an ancient river once emptied into an ancient lake, and looking for signs of life. It's taking rock samples that will be returned to Earth which will allow the first definitive analysis for evidence of life on Mars.
apathytheynameismeh t1_it6drzg wrote
It’s made to think that 80oC years ago. People were saying if humans were supposed to fly god would have given us wings. Now we are driving a little robot around remotely collecting samples on another world. That got there by being launched out of our atmosphere.
zwcbz t1_it1l549 wrote
That is really cool! I did not even know we had defined time periods in martian history. Thanks for a new rabbit hole to dive into.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2x707 wrote
Yesss we do, there are three geological periods, how we subdivide time is something I am very interested in. However Mars chronology is in its infancy. Just like how Earth once started out with just four time periods (Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Palaeozoic and Precambrian) that were then subdivided greatly as we learnt more and more, I expect that 40 years from now the number of Mars geological periods will have doubled or more.
Prof_X_69420 t1_it271d6 wrote
Dump question: Is there a canyon or rock face on mars where you can see the layers of sedinentary rock (where you on earth could "easily see fossils"
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2w3tr wrote
Yes! There are loads and loads of places where sedimentary layers are well exposed, probably more exposures than Earth given that most sedimentary rocks on Earth are buried by soil/vegetation/water.
Valles Marineris is the biggest example, it's a canyon 3 times deeper than the Grand Canyon and is so long it would stretch across the whole of America.
This page has dozens of pictures of cliff faces with layered rock in Valles Marineris
Here's one cool example. Maybe there are fossils there! We'd need to send a new rover or helicopter to find out :)
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Abrahamlinkenssphere t1_it0kxp7 wrote
Do you go off sweet ramps with the rover?
Slava91 t1_iszyxl9 wrote
Amazing, congrats on the internship! This is probably a stupid question, but is that image in the post in false colour to bring out details? Asking because of the blue sky.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it05xwg wrote
Yes, you're right that bluish tone to the sky is false colour. The true Martian sky is a dusty beige but turns blueish-white at sunset.
Slava91 t1_it0eocp wrote
Thanks! Are “natural” colour versions available so I can pretend to be sitting on a lawn chair on Mars?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it121xy wrote
Slava91 t1_it13fx1 wrote
Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
MissTheWire t1_it2ikt5 wrote
Robot selfies! so cool.
TimeLeopard t1_it15igf wrote
In your opinion, and assuming life did in fact exist on mars, what are the odds that curiosity or another rover would just stumble upon a fossil out in the open?
Like the rover is driving a long and boom just in frame in a rock or in the Martian soil is a fish fossil or something.
My assumption would be because of wind and sand erosion it's super unlikely. We would have to dig to find anything. But the thought a fossil just showing up in one of these photos makes me so excited. Especially considering where Curiosity is now.
canyonstom t1_it1tykg wrote
I'm not OP but it's probably just short of impossible it could chance upon a fossil of any sort of multicellular organism. Based on Earth history, we have evidence of microbial life from approximately 3.7 billion years ago.
The first evidence of multicellular organisms don't appear until circa 600 million years ago, so evolution took 3 billion years to advance from single to multicellular life.
From our observations of Mars, it is believed the last water would have dried up around 3.7 billion years ago. Its approximate age is 4.6 billion years, or around the same age as Earth.
Taking what we know about our own planet it is fair to say that any single celled organisms on Mars didn't have long enough to evolve to become multicellular, assuming there ever were any single celled lifeforms there in the first place.
TimeLeopard t1_it29c13 wrote
Well also consider that even if Earth and Mars are the same age, we can factor in that most models predict the moon slaming into earth during its early formation. If the same event didn't happen until much later in Mars formation, it could be possible Mars had a head start. Granted didnt Phobos slam into Mars too? I don't really know when that was supposed to have happened.
But yeah I'm getting way into speculation here than actually any science.
danielravennest t1_it3nyy6 wrote
> Granted didnt Phobos slam into Mars too? I don't really know when that was supposed to have happened.
50 million years from now, if we don't mess with it. By then we could have mined it for raw materials, or turned it into an anchor for a space elevator.
We don't know how Phobos and Deimos came to be, but one idea is debris kicked up by an asteroid collision, that then came together by gravity. There are plenty of big craters on Mars that could have been a source.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it32d0s wrote
So something like a fish is definitely out the question, because the period when Mars was habitable was only like 500-1000 million years after the solar system formed. Complex life like simple animals (jellyfish,sponges) didn't evolve until 3700 million years into Earth's history and fish didn't evolve until 4100 million years into Earth's history. Mars never had the time to evolve something so complex as a fish.
So instead of fish we're looking for much simpler microbial life. An individual fossil microbe is far too small for the rover to spot. Fortunately though, even simple microbes can group into larger colonies leaving behind rock structures called stromatolites which are really distinctive and are known from rocks of similar age on Earth. So that's the kind of thing we're hoping the rover just stumbles on.
It's worth adding though that Curiosity has been exploring lake-bottom sediments for 10 years now and nothing remotely like a stromatolite has yet been found. Perhaps that's telling us something. Maybe there were microbes but they didn't form into colonies for some reason, maybe the water conditions were wrong. Maybe there was life on Mars but it never reached this lake. Or maybe there was no life at all. OOOOor maybe there are stromatolites in Gale Crater and we just landed in the wrong place ;)
Silk_Hope_Woodcraft t1_it0x2kc wrote
Aren't layers sedimentary and not related to timeline?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it10bd9 wrote
They are sedimentary, yes. In a lake bed setting, imagine clay particles settling out of suspension and forming a thin layer of mud ontop of the original rock. Now imagine that the lake persists for a million years, that deposit of mud on the lake floor has now grown hundreds of metres thick.
Billions of years later, the rover visits the site. The lake water is long dried up and that mud has turned into stone, which has been heavily eroded. The rover landed at the lowest point in the crater, where you can see where that very first layer of mud sitting ontop of the original rock. Therefore, we first encountered mud formed at the very beginning of the lake's history. In the years since, the rover has driven steadily uphill, climbing through sequentially higher mud layers and so 'further in time'. So, as the rover ascends upwards, we see progressively younger layers. We are now at the time when the lake dried up.
Lardass_Goober t1_it1i6s8 wrote
How far has the rover traveled since landing?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2xde3 wrote
28 km and about 500m upwards in elevation
SenorTron t1_it2axsy wrote
What processes have eroded the deposited layers away since then, and why is it more eroded in the center of the crater?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2tte0 wrote
Good question! We believe at one point the sand dunes we're starting to see actually eventually completely buried the crater - which is several kilometres deep and 150km wide so quite a huge volume of sand! However, almost all of that sand has now been completely scoured away by wind over the past 3 billion years, exposing the ancient lake sediments underneath for us to study. The exact center of the crater is actually the least eroded, that's why the central peak mountain, Aeolis Mons (aeolis is latin for wind!) is so much taller than the crater floor, it's 5.5km high. It's this mountain that the rover is climbing up. In fact it's so tall its a bit of a puzzle, we're not sure why the sand formations didn't erode here.
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Foosh718 t1_it1cmay wrote
Sedimentary layers are laid down sequentially, and so document the passage of time. In archeology, this is what makes stratigraphy useful as dating evidence.
Silk_Hope_Woodcraft t1_it4nq84 wrote
So, if there ever was water/liquid present, wouldn't the time passage of sequential laying of layers happen quickly? (Like ice rings don't count years, but changes in temperature) Aren't we assuming a lot to say these layers represent passage of time?
Foosh718 t1_it4usx3 wrote
As you say, under some conditions layers are laid down more quickly, and of different materials. Over time different materials also compress to different degrees. All of these conditions leave clues geologists can identify and interpret: "time passage of sequential" layers is still time passage, and additional information about context lets them interpret the scale of that time. (Similarly, tree rings grow at different rates under different conditions, but can be interpreted reliably.)
DM-Disaster t1_it16f7d wrote
I have read so much news about space today and it’s made me so happy. Thank you for sharing this. I’m so excited.
And congratulations on such an awesome internship!
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2xux0 wrote
Thank you!
driverofracecars t1_it1r7w7 wrote
> If you have any questions about the Curiosity or Perseverance
Ya’ll hiring mechanical engineers?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2wj7s wrote
TBH I wouldn't know because i'm not involved with the engineering side of the mission at all (i'm on the science side). But probably yes. The place to check is the JPL website, and if that fails then you could ask the lead engineers of the mission.
driverofracecars t1_it3c3jt wrote
If I DM you, can you give me the contact info of the lead or hiring engineer?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it5crh7 wrote
I wouldn't even know who that is, i'm new to the mission
If you're really interested then my recommendation is you check out the hiring pages of the institutions that built each spacecraft instrument. this is a list of all the instruments and the labs that built and run them. Remember Curiosity is just one mission, NASA runs another more sophisticated rover Perseverance and also like a dozen other missions across the solar system, each of which has their own instruments and their own institutions.
arminVT t1_it1o5ue wrote
Hi
What is the current scientific point of view on the composition of early martian atmosphere
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2wty0 wrote
Excellent question! This is one of the biggest debates in Mars science - we really don't know to be honest! All we know is that the atmosphere must have been far thicker than today and must have contained a lot of greenhouse gases to explain how a planet much further than the sun was able to sustain liquid water on its surface without it freezing.
Candidates include: CO2 NH3 CH4 SO2 H2O
_Frog_Enthusiast_ t1_it278vz wrote
Congrats on the job!!!! How long are the rovers supposed to last, and would they be accessible to recover if/when humans reach Mars?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2vejc wrote
Technically the rovers are only supposed to last for about a martian year (3 Earth yrs) but in actuality the engineers design the components to last much longer. Why? Well NASA virtually always gives funding to extend the lifetime of the mission. Opportunity, for example, was supposed to last 90 days but ended up surviving 14 years until a dust storm killed it off.
Curiosity and Perseverance's lifetime is limited by its power source, which is fueled by the decay of radioactive elements. This is only going to last 10-15 years before the rover runs out of power - for reference Curiosity is 10 years old and Perseverance is 1 year old. Once they run out of power, their instruments become irreperably damaged by the cold winter temperature.
So people definitely won't make it in time to save Curiosity, but perhaps we could greet Perseverance :)
ulvhedinowski t1_it4n3cr wrote
Are smart people in NASA thinking about how to extend the lifetime od Curiosity, i.e. by turning off some instruments?
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Lognipo t1_it15p0e wrote
The composite picture in the article shows little dunes that fade in color from black to red to white at the ridge. It also shows even smaller sure like structures where it fades from red at the base to black (ish) at the ridge. Do you know what the sources of these colors are and/or why they might appear in these particular patterns?
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ulvhedinowski t1_it4munj wrote
Would it be possible and would it even make sense to send some good microscope to Mars to look for some smaller signs of fossils?
Zenguro t1_it06v4f wrote
This is blowing my mind right now.
Link to full sized image. So much detail, totally surreal.
MoreGull t1_it0o9da wrote
Dang! You can zoom in very closely too in this amazing photo. Funny to say, but it truly looks alien and familiar at the same time.
Leading-Two5757 t1_it253h9 wrote
Turns out rocks be rockin even on mars
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purplelegs t1_it15bo1 wrote
Hey question, the instrument on the far right of the image, is it covered in duck tape?
Override9636 t1_it29iw6 wrote
That's the Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) antenna used to communicate back and forth with Earth through orbiting satellites around Mars. Not sure exactly what that cover is, but it likely helps with the signaling or protects it from the harsh environment.
purplelegs t1_it4dl1b wrote
Oh wow that’s awesome, thanks for the knowledge!
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gypsydreams101 t1_it3qgls wrote
I can’t wait till we’re shooting Westerns on Mars. Time to bring John Wayne’s marionette to life.
This is a stunning image and the sheer amount of detail in it just made my day sol.
[deleted] t1_it06un4 wrote
This is beyond fascinating. Never have I imagined seeing the surface of Mars in this way and it just pops up on my phone… Thanks for sharing and congrats! 👏🏿👏🏿 you should be stoked that’s so awesome! I’m studying science and will be proud to call myself a scientist some day.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it0aa86 wrote
If you want to see more Mars, all the time, these two pages show each rover's latest images in near-real time
[deleted] t1_it0bnyt wrote
I’m autistic and it’s difficult for me to express myself as intended when I type but these + those images of the Pillars of Creation I just saw earlier have me all… existentially emotional(?). So once again, thanks! What you and your colleagues are doing are definitely something I admire greatly! 🫶🏿
bigrobotdinosaur t1_it0xn32 wrote
Existentially emotional is a cool way to put it. I think I felt that too looking at those pics.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it12ew4 wrote
The new pillars of creation photo is indeed incredible! Spent a bit of time earlier today just zooming in the full resolution (140 MB!) image and taking a look around :)
[deleted] t1_it15gxp wrote
This isn’t going to come out right but I want to express how cool this is for me… Years ago, I worked with movie stars and famous people or whatever and I rarely thought of it as a big deal… but speaking with everyone on this subreddit and everyone else who works in the field I aim to be in is like talking to a rock stars for me. Y’all are who deserve praise and recognition as far as I’m concerned. F*cking awesome. 🤘🏿🫶🏿
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it2yn48 wrote
Thank you, you're very kind! 🤘🏿
darrellgh t1_iszstif wrote
Congratulations! We would love to know what you’re up to periodically. I’m going to follow you in the hopes that I can see what you do there.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it06l2i wrote
Thank you! Don't expect much because JPL/the government is quite strict on what you can say, so I'm not allowed to share anything that hasn't been greenlit for public release. The press releases tend to lag the rover activities by a week or two. The best place for regular updates on the rovers is the blog page:
Link to the Curiosity rover mission updates blog
Link to the Perseverance rover mission updates blog
grammarGuy69 t1_iszs61n wrote
Do you think it's more likely to find direct evidence of life or indirect evidence? If it's the latter, what sort of markers would we be looking for as proof?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it08v28 wrote
Scientists will be wary of announcing the discovery of alien life unless the evidence is direct and unequivocal. However, given how hostile Mars' present surface is, it's very unlikely we'll find living microbes on the surface. Instead, we're really looking for fossilised microbes inside rocks, because Mars was a much more habitable planet in the ancient past (4.5-3.5 billion years ago).
Definitive proof of alien life on Mars would therefore have to meet multiple of these expected criteria:
- Biogenic sedimentary structures like stromatolites. This is what everyone is hoping we find because these features are very large and obvious. We find them in Earth rocks of similar age.
- Chirality. Organic (carbon-based) molecules often have two 'mirror versions' of each other, a "left handed" version and a "right handed" version. Without the action of life, these molecules are usually in equal abundance, but biological processes tend to generate molecules that are very skewed towards one and not the other. IIRC, on Earth molecules overwhelmingly tend to be left-handed, and this is a big giveaway that Earth has life
- Microscopic things with cell-like morphology and cell-like sizes (micrometres)
- Evidence of various cell morphs, representing multiple species or life stages
- Evidence of cell clustering, indicating of cell division, or colonies of cells which organise into shapes like spirals or tubes
- Presence of biomolecules such as certain lipids which are only produced by biology
- Isotope fractionation. As a byproduct of biological processes that are universal to all Earth organisms, the abundance of certain isotopes such as those of Carbon is skewed in a way that is very distinctive of life
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it09ns2 wrote
Since neither rover has a microscope or state-of-the-art mass spectrometer (due to budget and mass constraint limitations), we're therefore going to have to wait until we can study Mars rocks in a lab on Earth to really answer these questions - unless Perseverance just stumbles across a stromatolite lol.
Fortunately, NASA's already set that plan in motion. The rocks that Perseverance is coring will be brought back to Earth by a series of robotic missions, they'll return to Earth in the early 2030s. They will be the most scientifically valuable materials in history! Only then will we be able to definitively answer - yes or no- whether the area Perseverance is exploring had alien life.
kldload t1_it0nzz8 wrote
Mark my words. SpaceX will land a human on Mars before NASA gets anywhere CLOSE to doing a sample return.
sonsofgondor t1_it1nudf wrote
How close do you realistically think SpaceX is to landing humans on Mars? They haven't even crashed on Mars yet. I bet we get the cores before humans get to Mars
kldload t1_it1ujg4 wrote
What vehicle will nasa use? Sls? Ha!
sonsofgondor t1_it1yw8c wrote
Whatever one they want to. Nasa have been there many times. SpaceX should aim to get people on the moon before mars
kldload t1_it2e289 wrote
Lol they will need a bigger launch vehicle and a sizable return vehicle. Masa has never landed a payload of that size. They have no vehicle brother
sonsofgondor t1_it4stll wrote
Whats the biggest payload SpaceX has landed on another planet? SpaceX hasn't even landed a gram on another rocky body
wgp3 t1_it2yxly wrote
You clearly don't understand what the mars sample return mission is. You don't need sls. I don't think they have a launch vehicle chosen yet but I believe falcon9/heavy would work as would Vulcan.
The sample return mission isn't some huge vehicle carrying humans to grab samples and come back. So they don't need a big rocket like that. Perseverance is gathering the samples and leaving them on the surface. A future mission will include a small rover and two helicopters I believe (like ingenuity) to collect the samples. These samples will be delivered to MAV (mars ascent vehicle) which is basically a beefed up sounding rocket. This will then drop the samples off in an orbiter that will then make its way back to earth.
The MAV and the rovers and the copters and the orbiter are all in development right now as well. We should see the next launch for this mission in the 2027 time frame, wherever that launch window is. And then I believe there will be another in 2030 or so. Then the samples come back by 2031 or something like that. Hard to remember off the top of my head.
While this is a complex mission it isn't too herculean of a task to keep within a few years of the plan considering sample caching is already started and ingenuity specs barely need to be modified.
While I honestly have no doubt that nasa will be using spacex for carry astronauts to mars one day, I don't think that day will be before 2032. SpaceX is already behind on starship. Not by a whole lot but they are behind their ambitious goals. We probably won't see a first test flight until the start of next year. They'll have to refine their earth operations and their lunar operations over the next few years. I doubt they even make the 2025 human landing on the moon at their current rate of progress (although faster than anyone else could do).
Starship could make the sample return moot though. It's much more plausible that by 2030 starship can do an unmanned mars round trip. The scale of samples that could be brought back would dwarf MAV. But we shall see.
kldload t1_it4gbr2 wrote
What the hell would they use to lift everything off the surface? They need several vehicles and haven’t even started development on any of it. Also funny that you mentioned two spacex vehicles hahaha. NASA is nothing but an astronomy club these days
wgp3 t1_it8y0q8 wrote
Are you illiterate? I literally wrote out exactly what they would use. MAV. Mars ascent vehicle. It's a beefed up sounding rocket. They literally have started on these "vehicles". I work with people who currently are doing trajectory analysis for MAV. Of course I mentioned two spacex vehicles. They would be great for sending the orbiter and even the lander/MAV. Maybe learn what you're talking about before just saying shit? Especially since NASA is currently operating more vehicles on Mars than anyone else and has extensive knowledge on landing and orbiting it.
As for the astronomy jab, I repeat they have more vehicles operating on Mars than anyone else. They have satellites around Jupiter. They're about to send a flying laboratory to Titan. They operate the international space station. They do a bit more than astronomy you dolt.
kldload t1_it93alx wrote
What’s with all the personal attacks haha check your ego mate
2oonhed t1_iszjn5c wrote
So, are we going to completely gloss over the dead fish in the foreground?
Because I would really like to talk about it.
-DementedAvenger- t1_iszqf6a wrote
This thing? …bc that’s definitely just a rock formation that resembles a fish.
Jaggedmallard26 t1_it28lju wrote
That's what they want us to believe so they can keep all the tasty Mars salmon to themselves.
Lardass_Goober t1_it1ij91 wrote
It’s a Martian fish, dog. Let them have this one! 🤣
2oonhed t1_it4dsgt wrote
Sentient fish that died from shock after seeing the lander.
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_iszmvmo wrote
Which of the two images are you talking about?
theTexans t1_iszptiz wrote
The giant dead half-eaten fish in the first image, not the panoramic at the top of the article.
-DementedAvenger- t1_iszqhwy wrote
It’s not a half eaten fish. It’s a rock formation.
theTexans t1_iszrcdl wrote
Well yeah, it was half-eaten at least 3.5 Billion years ago
Delicious-Gap1744 t1_it05ncx wrote
I'm pretty sure a fish fossil that close to the surface wouldn't survive billions of years of erosion from the atmosphere.
Realistically using Earth as an example there wasn't even close to enough time where Mars was habitable for complex multicellular life to evolve, only microbes.
Just for reference the first single celled life evolved on Earth 3.7 billion years ago, but the first complex multicellular life first evolved 600 million years ago.
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G14LoliBdsmFurryTrap t1_it07eyj wrote
Soooo awesome
Icy_Limit8430 t1_it0iok5 wrote
Has to be fascinating and exciting ! Congrats
FritzGman t1_it0zooc wrote
I get such Total Recall vibes from these pictures that I expected Arnold to pop up from the side of the picture! Amazing.
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Decronym t1_it2zzhk wrote
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |JPL|Jet Propulsion Lab, California| |LPSC|Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre| |MAV|Mars Ascent Vehicle (possibly fictional)| |UHF|Ultra-High Frequency radio|
^(4 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 37 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8167 for this sub, first seen 20th Oct 2022, 15:47])
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Vonmises27 t1_iszzkbw wrote
Looks like bell rock in Sedona. Lol
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v3ritas1989 t1_it20mal wrote
Why are the pictures always so weirdly cut and stitched together? Is it using more than one camera with different aspect ratios or do they somehow stitch together a time series after moving, having to cut out parts of other picuters? And why are they always tilted?
Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_it36mkb wrote
They're tilted because Curiosity is actually sitting on a pretty steep incline right now, it's climbing up a mountain after all, so the horizon is slanted/sloped.
They're cut and stitched together because the camera's field of view is not wide enough to capture the scene in one photo, instead it creates *mosaics* of photos produced by stitching together dozens of photos taken seconds apart. This is necessary to get such amazingly high resolution panoramas. There IS a wide angle camera with a big enough FOV to capture it all on one go, but the result is quite unspectacular!
v3ritas1989 t1_it3t81i wrote
interesting, thanks for explaining.
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Pluto_and_Charon OP t1_iszl0oy wrote
So for the past 10 years Curiosity has been climbing its way through a stack of clay-rich rock (mudstones, siltstones) that is hundreds of metres thick. Scientists think this was deposited at the bottom of a large lake that may have persisted for hundreds of thousands of years (or longer!) before eventually drying out, around 3.5 billion years ago. We think this ancient lake had all the required conditions to support life, although the mission wasn't equipped to search for direct evidence for fossil life (it's harder than you think).
Now, though, as we ascend upwards (getting later and later into the lake's history), we're seeing the beginning of major environmental change. The rocks now tell us the lake levels had dropped and sand dunes had begun to migrate onto the lakebed. Perhaps this increase in aridity reflects the loss of Martian atmosphere, or perhaps simply changes in regional climate. We'll have to wait and see what the rover finds :)
Source: As of like a week ago I now work on the Perseverance rover team. If you have any questions about the Curiosity or Perseverance or Mars in general, feel free to ask!