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JPL’s Rover Curiosity Snaps a Selfie as It Rides Out Martian Dust Storm

Published on Tuesday, June 19, 2018 | 5:13 am
 
Image Source: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Seán Doran

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover, managed by JPL in Pasadena, has sent back a selfie as it rides out a massive dust storm that has already caused the Opportunity rover to shut down because of the lack of sunlight.

The image was captured in pieces and assembled by NASA and JPL to come up with the selfie showing how Curiosity sits quietly on the Mars landscape as the sky turns orange, a report on tech and entertainment site BGR said Monday.

Digital artist Sean Doran touched up the image and shared it on Flickr, the report said.

Meanwhile, NASA still don’t know much about Opportunity’s status since Wednesday when they said the rover has turned all subsystems off as it rides out “one of the most intense dust storms ever recorded” on Mars.

The only thing that’s working on the rover is its mission clock, NASA said, since it is programmed to wake Opportunity’s computer so it can check its power levels.

JPL scientists said they haven’t heard from Opportunity since Sunday, June 10.

The current storm the two rovers are in started on May 30 and is expected to rage for about a month or two.

NASA said last week the storm covers about 14 million square miles of the planet’s surface – about a quarter of Mars.

Once the storm passes, engineers at JPL hope Opportunity could come back to life.

JPL manages the Mars rover missions for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

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