This is what a day on Mars is like: NASA’s Curiosity rover records from dawn to dusk | VIDEO

New videos sent from Mars by the veteran Curiosity rover show its shadow moving across the surface of the Red Planet, during a 12-hour sequence while it remained stationary.

When this NASA robotic Mars vehicle is not moving, it works quite well as a sundial, as seen in two black and white videos recorded on November 8, the 4,002nd Martian day of the mission. The rover captured its own shadow moving across the surface of Mars using its hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams, in black and white, NASA reports.

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The instructions for recording the videos were part of the last set of commands sent to Curiosity just before the start of the Mars solar conjunction, a period when the Sun is between Earth and Mars. Because plasma from the Sun can interfere with radio communications, missions postpone sending commands to Mars spacecraft for several weeks during this time. (The missions were not totally out of contact: they still radioed regular health checks throughout the conjunction.)

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Rover drivers typically rely on Curiosity’s Hazcams to detect rocks, slopes and other hazards that may be risky to traverse. But because the rover’s other activities were intentionally curtailed just before conjunction, the team decided to use the Hazcams to record 12 hours of snapshots for the first time, hoping to capture clouds or dust devils that could reveal more about the rover. climate of the Red Planet.

When the images came down to Earth after the conjunction, the scientists didn’t see any notable weather, but the pair of 25-frame videos they put together capture the passage of time. Stretching from 5:30 am to 5:30 pm local time, the videos show Curiosity’s silhouette changing as the day moves from morning to afternoon to night.

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The first video, featuring frontal Hazcam footage, looks southeast along Gediz Vallis, a valley located on Mount Sharp. Curiosity has been ascending the base of the 5-kilometer-high mountain, which is located in Gale Crater, since 2014.

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As the sky brightens during sunrise, the shadow of the rover’s 2-meter robotic arm moves to the left and Curiosity’s front wheels emerge from the darkness on either side of the frame. Also visible on the left is a circular calibration target mounted on the shoulder of the robotic arm. Engineers use the target to test the accuracy of the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, an instrument that detects chemical elements on the Martian surface.

In the middle of the day, the Front Hazcam’s auto-exposure algorithm sets exposure times of around a third of a second. As night falls, that exposure time increases to more than a minute, causing the typical sensor noise known as “hot pixels” that appears as white snow in the final image.

The second video shows the rear Hazcam view as it looks northwest up the slopes of Mount Sharp to the floor of Gale Crater. The rover’s right rear wheel is visible, along with the shadow of Curiosity’s power system. A small black artifact that appears on the left in the middle of the video, during frame 17, was the result of a cosmic ray that hit the camera sensor. Likewise, the bright flash and other noises at the end of the video are the result of heat from the spacecraft’s power system affecting the Hazcam’s image sensor.

These images have been reprojected to correct the wide angle lenses of the Hazcams. The speckled appearance of the images, especially prominent in the rear camera video, is due to 11 years of Martian dust settling on the lenses.

Source: Elcomercio

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