Mars Curiosity Rover’s Panoramic View is Beautiful And Creature-Free

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Curiosity

You open the mailbox and beneath the small stack of bills, and you find a postcard from a traveling family member who’s stopping in Branson, MO to see the Mel Tillis Theater. Then you spend the rest of the day envying all of the relatives of the Mars Curiosity rover, because they probably don’t have to put up with that shit.

Curiosity has been giving us gorgeous views of the Red Planet since it touched soil in August 2012, but these interactive panoramic photo compilations, hosted by 360Cities, are some of the most beautiful and important pictures ever taken, giving us a vivid gallery of a place I’ll never get to travel to. This panorama is a composite of 130 images taken using both the Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI), and the 34mm Mastcam, all shot from the Yellowknife Bay region of the massive Gale Crater. It’s where Curiosity recently took its first drilling sample and very recently processed the rock’s dust into its onboard laboratory for testing. But that’s the technical news. This is all about the pretty shit.

Take a small but expansive tour of the Martian grounds, either zooming out to take in the mountainous horizon beneath a more distant sun, or zoom into the cracked ground and try and convince yourself you saw a lizard right before you moved the mouse and changed the image completely.

Though I’m slightly disappointed there aren’t any symbols that look like crop circles lying about, Curiosity is still young, and there will be more images to come, giving me more time to craft a design of Curiosity on my ceiling with glow-in-the-dark stars.

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