Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

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

Georgina Torbet
By

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

Topics
NASA’s Mars rover makes ‘one small drop for humankind’
The first Mars rock sample left at a collection site by NASA's Perseverance rover.
NASA declares Mars InSight lander mission officially over
This illustration shows NASA's InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface.
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 Perseverance rover is building a sample cache on Mars
The location where NASA’s Perseverance will begin depositing its first cache of samples is shown in this image taken by the Mars rover on Dec. 14, 2022, the 646th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.
SpaceX stacks mighty Super Heavy rocket as it eyes February test launch
SpaceX's Starship spacecraft being placed atop the Super Heavy rocket.
Large NASA satellite falls back to Earth after decades in orbit
NASA's ERBS satellite.
SpaceX preps Polaris Dawn mission featuring first commercial spacewalk
The Polaris Dawn crew.
Russia reveals plan to rescue three space station crewmates
Russia's Soyuz spacecraft leaking coolant at the space station.
SpaceX making final preparations for first flight of brand new rocket
SpaceX's Super Heavy and Starship.
Mars helicopter keeps on flying as it approaches second anniversary
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.
James Webb captures stunning image of star formation in nearby galaxy
NGC 346, shown here in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a dynamic star cluster that lies within a nebula 200,000 light years away. Webb reveals the presence of many more building blocks than previously expected, not only for stars, but also planets, in the form of clouds packed with dust and hydrogen. 
NASA’s Lunar Flashlight mission hindered by thruster issue
This illustration shows NASA’s Lunar Flashlight carrying out a trajectory correction maneuver with the Moon and Earth in the background. Powered by the small satellite’s four thrusters, the maneuver is needed to reach lunar orbit.
These supermassive black holes are cozying up close together
Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to look deep into the heart of the pair of merging galaxies known as UGC 4211 discovered two black holes growing side by side, just 750 light-years apart. This artist’s conception shows the late-stage galaxy merger and its two central black holes. The binary black holes are the closest together ever observed in multiple wavelengths.