[ad_1]
NASA’s Curiosity rover is waiting to be joined on Mars by its brother Perseverance, which will land on the red planet in February next year. But in the meantime, Curiosity is busy with its own research and recently took an amazing selfie while exploring a region known as “Mary Anning”.
The rover has drilled three holes to look for organic molecules in the rocks, and after finishing its experiments, it is now moving towards its next target. But before he left the area, he took this picture of himself from the drilling sites.
“Curiosity took the selfie using a camera called the Mars Hand Lens Imager located at the end of its robotic arm,” NASA said in a blog post. “A close-up detail from inside the selfie shows the three holes that a rock drill, also found at the end of Curiosity’s arm, added to the surface. The three holes are named “Mary Anning”, “Mary Anning 3” and “Groken”, the surname coming from a site of geological interest in the Scottish countryside “.
This location is named after a 19th century paleontologist famous for discovering and classifying Jurassic fossils on the Dorset coast in the UK. life forms, as they explain in a blog post: “Mary Anning has spent her life scouring the cliffs near Lyme Regis on the south coast of England for fossils. He has discovered countless specimens, most notably the first complete ichthyosaur and the first plesiosaur. But as is too often the case in society, Mary Anning’s gender and social status have led to her groundbreaking work and discoveries being rejected by the scientific establishment or, worse, appropriated by men. “
The rover is now surveying the “Maybole” outcrop, which is an unusual ledge of particular interest to geologists. The team wants to know if the outcrop is a different type of rock than the lower ground surrounding it and if it might have characteristics in common with the sulfate unit the rover is heading for.
Editor’s Recommendations
Source link
