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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 1126: MAHLI selfie
This panorama combines 87 exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the Sol 1126 of Curiosity's work on Mars (October 6, 2015).
MSL did well last weekend, but the Sol 1124 MAHLI images of the unsieved part of the drill sample showed that the APXS was not perfectly centered on the dump pile. Therefore, the Sol 1126 plan includes new MAHLI images and APXS measurements, better centered on the dump pile. Before the arm activities, ChemCam will acquire passive spectra of part of Mt. Sharp, a 5x1 LIBS raster on "Canadian Creek", and an RMI image of the ChemCam calibration target. Then MAHLI will be used to take another self-portrait of the rover, and the APXS will be placed on the dump pile for an overnight integration. Later in the afternoon, Mastcam will acquire some mosaics and an image of Canadian Creek to provide context for the ChemCam observations. In parallel with the overnight APXS measurements, CheMin will analyze the material from the latest drill hole.
The rover's robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic. MAHLI, which took the component images for this mosaic, is mounted on a turret at the end of the arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images or portions of images used in the mosaic. Please check video explanation by NASA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V3_zMD_S9c
By Ken Herkenhoff
Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center
Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
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The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".
