NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has captured a historic image of itself driving across the Red Planet, marking what may be the first time an agency’s Mars orbiter has taken a picture of the rover in motion. The image was taken by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera on February 28, during the 4,466th Martian day of the mission.
The image shows Curiosity as a dark speck at the front of a trail of 1,050-foot-long tracks, indicating roughly 11 drives starting from February 2. The rover was moving at a top speed of 0.1 mph (0.16 kph) towards its next science stop: a region with potential boxwork formations.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are working to plan each day’s trek and navigate the challenging terrain. According to Doug Ellison, Curiosity’s planning team chief, the image was taken nearly 69 feet into a scheduled drive.
The HiRISE camera takes an image with most of the scene in black and white and a strip of color down the middle. This time, the rover happened to fall within the black-and-white part of the image. The tracks lead to the base of a steep slope, where the rover has since ascended. It is expected to reach its new science location within a month.
The Curiosity Mars rover was built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. The HiRISE camera is operated by the University of Arizona, with BAE Systems building it in Boulder, Colorado.
Source: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory/nasa-orbiter-spots-curiosity-rover-making-tracks-to-next-science-stop