Skip to main content

Curiosity snaps a selfie as it explores ‘Mary Anning’ on Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover is waiting to be joined on Mars by its sibling Perseverance, set to land on the red planet in February next year. But in the meantime, Curiosity is keeping busy with its own research, and has recently snapped a striking selfie as it explored a region known as “Mary Anning.”

The rover drilled three holes to search for organic molecules in the rocks, and having concluded its experiments, it is now moving on to its next target. But before it departed the area, it took this image of itself by the drill sites.

“Curiosity took the selfie using a camera called the Mars Hand Lens Imager located on the end of its robotic arm,” NASA said in a blog post. “A close-up detail from within the selfie shows the three holes that a rock drill, also found on the end of Curiosity’s arm, added to the surface. The three drill holes are named ‘Mary Anning,’ ‘Mary Anning 3,’ and ‘Groken,’ the last name coming from a site of geological interest in the Scottish countryside.”

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie at a location nicknamed "Mary Anning" after a 19th century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its way out of the Glen Torridon region, which scientists believe preserves an ancient habitable environment.
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover took this selfie at a location nicknamed “Mary Anning” after a 19th century English paleontologist. Curiosity snagged three samples of drilled rock at this site on its way out of the Glen Torridon region, which scientists believe preserves an ancient habitable environment. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

This location is named after a 19th-century paleontologist who is famous for discovering and classifying Jurassic fossils on the coast of Dorset in the U.K. The Curiosity team chose to name this area in her honor to reflect her often-overlooked contribution to the science of early life forms, as they explain in a blog post: “Mary Anning spent her life scouring the seaside cliffs near Lyme Regis, along the southern coast of England, for fossils. She uncovered innumerable samples, most notably the first full Ichthyosaur and the first Plesiosaur. But as all too often occurs in society, Mary Anning’s gender and societal status led her groundbreaking work and discoveries to be dismissed by the scientific establishment or, worse, appropriated by men.”

The rover is now checking out the “Maybole” outcrop, which is an unusual ledge of particular interest to geologists. The team wants to know whether the outcrop is a different type of rock to the lower terrain surrounding it and whether it might have features in common with the sulfate unit which the rover is heading toward.

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Final messages from NASA’s Mars lander will bring a tear to your eye
A view from NASA's InSight lander showing its wind and thermal shield covering some of its science instruments.

The last image from NASA's InSight lander shows the wind and thermal shield covering some of its science instruments. NASA

It’s been known for some time that NASA’s InSight Lander was coming to the end of its operations on Mars after four years of service. And it looks as if its final communication with Earth has just taken place.

Read more
How will NASA keep Mars astronauts safe from cosmic radiation? Here’s the plan
AstroRad Vest

The Artemis I mission, which recently completed a historic test flight around the moon, didn't have any astronauts on board -- but it did have two very special passengers: Helga and Zohar, a pair of highly anatomically detailed dummy torsos, one of which wore a special radiation shielding vest for the journey. Their mission? Measure radiation exposure in deep space and determine whether a vest can help protect astronauts from the unseen dangers of space.

 

Read more
Watch NASA’s cinematic animation of upcoming Mars Sample Return mission
Animation screen grab showing NASA's upcoming Mars Sample Return mission.

NASA has released a cinematic animation showing some of the key moments from the upcoming Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission.

Mars Sample Return: Bringing Mars Rock Samples Back to Earth

Read more