NASA shares the sweet selfie of the Mars Curiosity rover with three holes

Human imagination is not bound by Earth, and there is no better reminder of the worlds beyond our planet than a new selfie from Mars. NASA’s Curiosity rover looks sharp in a snapshot shared by NASA on Thursday.

The October 25 image shows the dusty rover looking over his work: three holes in the area just to the left of the vehicle. The curiosity lies in a place called “Mary Anning”, named after an English paleontologist pioneer of the 1800s.

“Scientists from the Curiosity team saw fit to name the sampling site after Anning because of the area’s potential to reveal details about the ancient environment,” NASA said in a statement.

We have a a sneak peek of city scientist Kevin Gill’s selfie (who describes himself as a “data wrangler” at NASA-JPL) in late October. The shot is from Curiosity’s Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera and is made up of multiple images stitched together into a full rover image.

There are a lot of fun tidbits to explore in this image. For starters, check out the broken rock on the far left of the formation with holes. The rock cracked when Curiosity pierced it. NASA shared an annotated close-up view of the drilling site with the holes labeled. “Groken” is the one with the crack.

Then, take a look at Curiosity’s central wheel and check out the cracks that have developed after long years of work on top of the rough Martian landscape. It might look ugly, but the the rover works really well and NASA has come up with ways to mitigate the damage.

We also have a nice view of the surroundings of Curiosity, where he is exploring inside the Gale Crater. If in the distance it looks a bit foggy, it could be because Mars is in its dusty season, when the wind stirs up dust devils and the sky can go dull.

Curiosity’s exploration mission continues as we wait for its brother, the Perseverance rover, to reach Mars in February 2021. So we can’t wait to double the Mars selfies.