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Curiosity Snaps 'Arm's Length' Self Portrait

Posted by timothy on from the pleased-to-meet-me dept.

astroengine writes "Using its robotic arm-mounted MAHLI camera, NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has snapped, quite possibly, the most iconic image to come from the mission so far. By stitching together 55 high-resolution photos, the rover has snapped an 'arm's length' self portrait, capturing its location in the geologically interesting area known as 'Rocknest,' including its recent scoop marks in the Martian soil and the base of Mt. Sharp." Note to NASA: Please sell this image in the form of a fundraising poster.

11 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. That's strange by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I didn't know Curiosity was a teenage girl.

  2. Where is the arm? by Janek+Kozicki · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Where is the arm that holds the camera?

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    #\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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    1. Re:Where is the arm? by SomePgmr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's a series of images that, when stitched, conveniently exclude the arm.

    2. Re:Where is the arm? by kasperd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It's a series of images that, when stitched, conveniently exclude the arm.

      True, but where does the arm attach to the rover? That end of the arm must be visible on any picture taking of that part of the rover. I am curious to see the individual parts, just to figure out how that part of the rover really looks.

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      Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
    3. Re:Where is the arm? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This thing is going to get photoshopped to hell and back again.

      Too many possibilities to ignore.

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      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    4. Re:Where is the arm? by Barryke · · Score: 5, Informative

      Apparently it is attached to the rover by the horizontal cylinder shaped appendix between the front wheels.
      http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/uploads/RTEmagicC_Msl-arm.jpg.jpg

      Also google for "mars curiosity arm" theres some really nice pictures there.

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    5. Re:Where is the arm? by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 5, Informative

      Top-left here.

      (Of note - the raw images got released quite a few hours before the official stitched version did. So a bunch of amateurs including myself and others used various panorama-assembling software to assemble our own, unofficial stitched versions. Seeing Curiosity like this before pretty much everyone else was great...)

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      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  3. What a co-incidence!!! by MrKaos · · Score: 5, Funny

    To the Mars natives, Curiosity is known as the "Rocknest Monster"

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    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  4. Thirty-five megapixel version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    5463 x 7595 pixels (width x height)

    Original Caption Released with Image:

            On Sol 84 (Oct. 31, 2012), NASA's Curiosity rover used the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) to capture this set of 55 high-resolution images, which were stitched together to create this full-color self-portrait.

            The mosaic shows the rover at "Rocknest," the spot in Gale Crater where the mission's first scoop sampling took place. Four scoop scars can be seen in the regolith in front of the rover.

            The base of Gale Crater's 3-mile-high (5-kilometer) sedimentary mountain, Mount Sharp, rises on the right side of the frame. Mountains in the background to the left are the northern wall of Gale Crater. The Martian landscape appears inverted within the round, reflective ChemCam instrument at the top of the rover's mast.

            Self-portraits like this one document the state of the rover and allow mission engineers to track changes over time, such as dust accumulation and wheel wear. Due to its location on the end of the robotic arm, only MAHLI (among the rover's 17 cameras) is able to image some parts of the craft, including the port-side wheels.

            This high-resolution mosaic is a more detailed version of the low-resolution version created with thumbnail images, at PIA16238.

            JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

            For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://www.nasa.gov/mars, and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.
    Image Credit:
            NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

    Image Addition Date:
            2012-11-01

  5. Note to Slashdot by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please don't don't try to 'sell' page hits. Use the source...

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    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  6. Re:Why are there footprints... by Psychotria · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now that I look at it more I can find even further flaws in your theory that that are not footprints. If you zoom in, magnify and apply 24 Laplace transforms (not enough room here to write them out completely), rotate 5 degrees, shift each pixel using a polar function, rotate -5 degrees, zoom, sharpen, smooth, stretch horizontally 314 pixels, rotate 1.618 degrees, add the height Mt Everest and subtract 15 before finally passing it through a modified Bresenham circle algorithm you can clearly see the thread. The threads are clearly from a shoe... not your so called "little trenches".