Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Emerging Tech
  3. News

Orbiter spots Curiosity from space, shows our rover friend on surface of Mars

By
Add as a preferred source on Google

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover can be seen in this image taken from space on May 31, 2019, by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In the image, Curiosity appears as a bluish speck. NASA/JPL-Caltech

If you’ve been wondering how Curiosity is faring on Mars, now you can see for yourself, thanks to this image of the rover captured from orbit by NASA’s HiRISE camera.

Recommended Videos

Curiosity is sitting pretty in a location called Woodland Bay, which is part of the clay-bearing unit it has been exploring for several months. It is searching for clay in particular because it forms when water is present, so finding clay indicates that there could have been surface water on Mars in the distant past. The clay-bearing unit lies on one side of Mount Sharp, a mountain 3 miles (5 kilometers) tall which is located inside the Gale Crater.

If you look very closely, you can see Curiosity’s mast sticking out on the top left of the rover. This is the remote sensing mast, a long arm which holds up instruments like the ChemCam, which analyzes the composition of rocks from a distance using a laser, and the Mastcam, a high definition camera which captures images and video from the surface of the planet. When this image was taken, the rover was facing about 10 on a clock face, so the mast appears in front of the rover.

The rover and its mast in particular are very bright in the image, due to the way that HiRISE works. Due to its smooth surfaces, the rover reflects light which is picked up by the HiRISE camera. “A specular (mirror-like) reflection occurs when most of the light hitting a surface is reflected in a single direction, and can be seen by an observer looking from exactly that direction,” Alfred McEwen, Principal Investigator for HiRISE, explained in a statement.  “So for HiRISE to see specular reflections on the rover, the sun and MRO need to be in just the right locations.”

HiRISE is an instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), an orbiting craft which both gathers data for scientific missions and helps other craft to land on the planet. It helped choose landing sites for previous Mars landers like the Phoenix, and it acted as support during the landing of InSight. HiRISE is enjoying something of a famous few weeks, as it’s the same camera which spotted the Star Trek logo on Mars last month.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Former Space Writer
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Topics
Anti-surveillance clothing is getting cheaper, but don’t expect an invisibility cloak
Affordable shirts now claim to confuse facial recognition, although their protection depends heavily on the camera and software watching you
Chart, Plot, Adult

Anti-surveillance clothing is starting to look less like an art-school experiment and more like something you could actually wear outside. Shirts designed to confuse facial recognition systems now cost about as much as ordinary streetwear, although buying one won’t make you disappear.

The Guardian reports that designers are using face-like prints, unusual cuts and infrared lights to interfere with computer vision. These techniques target specific weaknesses, so their success depends on what happens to be watching you.

Read more
This spinning drone hides in plain sight using a visual illusion
This drone doesn't turn invisible. It tricks your brain into thinking it has.
Phantom Twist

For decades, engineers have chased the dream of an invisible drone. The usual approaches have involved transparent materials, camouflage coatings, or complex optical systems that bend light around an object. Researchers at Northwestern University decided to take a completely different route. Instead of hiding the drone itself, they chose to fool the human eye.

The result is Phantom Twist, an experimental drone that spins so rapidly it almost disappears into the background. It's not technically invisible, but to anyone watching, it looks more like a faint blur than a flying machine.

Read more
This smart knitted fabric can flip switches, count your steps, and even change shape
Grandma's knitting just entered its Iron Man era
Representative Image

For most of us, knitting brings to mind sweaters, scarves, and perhaps an ambitious grandmother determined to make winter more fashionable. Researchers at Harvard University, however, have a far more futuristic vision. They've transformed ordinary knitted fabric into a programmable material capable of changing shape, acting as an electrical switch, sensing movement, and potentially forming the foundation of tomorrow's wearable technology.

The research, published in Advanced Functional Materials by scientists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), demonstrates how machine-knitted textiles can "snap" between multiple stable shapes without relying on motors or rigid mechanical parts.

Read more