page_title: Curiosity (rover)
section_title: Wide images
hierarchical_section_title: Curiosity (rover) / Images / Wide images
caption_attribution_description: English: PIA16768: Mount Sharp Panorama in White-Balanced Colors http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16768 Target Name:	Mars Is a satellite of:	Sol (our sun) Mission: Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Spacecraft: Curiosity Instrument: Mastcam Product Size:	14576 x 2018 pixels (width x height) Produced By: Malin Space Science Systems Full-Res TIFF: PIA16768.tif (88.26 MB) Full-Res JPEG: PIA16768.jpg (2.085 MB) Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original) Original Caption Released with Image: This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp in a white-balanced color adjustment that makes the sky look overly blue but shows the terrain as if under Earth-like lighting. White-balancing helps scientists recognize rock materials based on their experience looking at rocks on Earth. The Martian sky would look more of a butterscotch color to the human eye. White balancing yields an overly blue hue in images that have very little blue information, such as Martian landscapes, because the white balancing tends to overcompensate for the low inherent blue content. Mount Sharp, also called Aeolis Mons, is a layered mound in the center of Mars' Gale Crater, rising more than 3 miles (5 kilometers) above the crater floor, where Curiosity has been working since the rover's landing in August 2012. Lower slopes of Mount Sharp are the major destination for the mission, though the rover will first spend many more weeks around a location called "Yellowknife Bay," where it has found evidence of a past environment favorable for microbial life. This mosaic was assembled from dozens of images from the 100-millimeter-focal-length telephoto lens camera mounted on the right side of the Mastcam instrument. The component images were taken during the 45th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's mission on Mars (Sept. 20, 2012). The sky has been filled out by extrapolating color and brightness information from the portions of the sky that were captured in images of the terrain. A raw-color version of the mosaic is available at PIA16769. Raw color shows the scene's colors as they would look in a typical smart-phone camera photo. Curiosity's Mastcam was built and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project and the mission's Curiosity rover for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Image Addition Date: 2013-03-15
context_page_description: Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26th, 2011, at 15:02 UTC and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale on Mars on August 6th, 2012, 05:17 UTC. The Bradbury Landing site was less than 2.4 km from the center of the rover's touchdown target after a 560 million km journey. The rover's goals include an investigation of the Martian climate and geology; assessment of whether the selected field site inside Gale has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including investigation of the role of water; and planetary habitability studies in preparation for human exploration.
  In December 2012, Curiosity's two-year mission was extended indefinitely, and on August 5th, 2017, NASA celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Curiosity rover landing. The rover is still operational, and as of August 21, 2020, Curiosity has been on the planet Mars for 2859 sols since landing on August 6th, 2012. The NASA/JPL Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity Project Team was awarded the 2012 Robert J.
caption: Curiosity's view of Mount Sharp (September 20, 2012; raw color version)
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