NASA’s Curiosity Rover has celebrated the 10th anniversary its Mars launch by returning a stunning ‘picture postcard.
The robotic explorer snapped two black and white images of the Martian landscape which were then combined and had colour added to them to produce the remarkable composite.
Curiosity took the photos after it launched on November 26, 2011 almost exactly 10years ago. From its latest perch at the Mount Sharp on Mars.
It captures a 360-degree view of its surroundings with its black-and-white navigation cameras each time it completes a drive, before beaming back the panorama to Earth.
The beauty of the landscape inspired the team so much that they combined black-and white images taken at different times and added colour to make a unique postcard. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said.

We wish you could be there! NASA’s Curiosity Rover has celebrated the 10th anniversary its Mars launch by returning a stunning ‘picture postcard” from Mars (pictured).

Two black-and-white images were taken by the robotic explorer of Martian terrain. These two photos were combined with colour to create the amazing composite

Curiosity takes a 360 degree view of the surroundings using its black-and white navigation cameras, and beams back that panorama to Earth after it finishes a drive.
The team stated in a statement that many of the most spectacular panoramas from Mars are made using the color Mastcam instrument. This has a much higher resolution than navigation cameras.
“That’s why we added our own colors to the new image.
“The tints of blue, orange and green aren’t what the eyes would see. They represent different views at different times.
Curiosity snapped the images twice on November 16. The first was at 8:30 local Mars time, and the second at 16;10.
JPL stated that this provided contrast lighting conditions, which brought out different landscape details.
After combining the scenes, the team created an artistic recreation that combined elements from both the morning scene and the afternoon scene.
At the centre of the image is the view back down Mount Sharp, or Aeolis Mons, a mountain that forms the central peak of Gale Crater.
Since 2014, Curiosity drives up the mountain’s three-mile (5km) height.
At the centre of the picture, you can see rounded hills and a field of ripples of sand known as the “Sands of Forvie”. It is approximately a quarter mile (400 to 800m).
To the right is the craggy Rafael Navarro Mountain. This mountain was named in honor of a Curiosity scientist who passed away earlier this year.
It is visible from behind, the top of Mount Sharp. This is far more than the area Curiosity explores.
Mount Sharp is located in Gale Crater. It’s a 96-mile (154km) large basin that was formed from an impact.
Gale Crater’s distant rim is 7500ft in height (2.3 km), and it can be seen from the horizon at approximately 18 to 25 miles (30 to 40km).
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is responsible for Curiosity, and is managed by Caltech, Pasadena.
It is not the newest rover on Mars — that honour belongs to Perseverance, which arrived with NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter in February this year and is Looking for ancient microbial lives on the Red Planet.
Last week Perseverance collected its third Martian sample, this time from a rock ‘loaded with the greenish mineral olivine’.
Each of the 43 titanium tubes carried by the Rover are loaded into one tube.
Perseverance’s scouting revealed that billions of years ago the Jezero meteorite had a river and lake delta. This made it a great place to find signs of “life”
NASA has plans to send 30 samples to Earth by 2030. Scientists will then be able conduct further analysis to confirm the existence of microbial life.
However, Perseverance itself is not bringing the samples back to Earth — when the rover reaches a suitable location, the tubes will dropped on the surface of Mars to be collected by a future retrieval mission, which is currently being developed.

Curiosity (pictured), which was launched almost exactly 10 year ago to Mars on November 26, 2011, captured the images from its latest perch at the Mount Sharp on Mars.
Perseverance will collect samples from Mars once it has collected them. It will then drop the materials at an appropriate location to allow future missions to retrieve them.
NASA and ESA are planning to launch another spacecraft which will leave Earth in 2026, and return to Mars in 2028.
The first will deploy a small rover, which will make its way to Perseverance, pick up the filled sampling tubes and transfer them to a ‘Mars ascent vehicle’ — a small rocket.
This rocket will blast off – in the process becoming the first object launched from the surface of Mars – and place the container into Martian orbit, meaning it will essentially be floating in space.
The third spacecraft, which is the final one involved in this tricky operation, will maneuver itself near the sample container and pick it up before flying it back to Earth.
If it is successful in re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, the Martian sample will be lost to space for 10 more years.