A jaw-dropping 360-degree photograph of Mars taken by its Curiosity Mars rover has been released by NASA.
The photograph surfaced and spread like wildfire on social media on Saturday, just a day after a stunning selfie beamed back from the Red Planet.
The photograph was posted on Curiosity's official Facebook page:
"Use your smart phone to explore Mars with me in 360 degrees. #FromWhereIStand," the space agency said.
People can take a look and explore the planet's Namib Dune. Here, one can take a closer look of the planet's sand grains, Martian rocks and NASA's probe itself.
Although the process of taking the photo was not explained, a lot have already guessed that "a composite of pictures taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imagers camera at the end of the rover's arm, much like the selfie released Friday."
Meanwhile, according to 360cities, Mars Science Laboratory mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. It is a long-term project with the goal of exerting effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. "Curiosity was designed to assess whether Mars ever had an environment able to support small life forms called microbes." In simpler terms, the mission of this rover it to find out about the planet's habitability.
Mars rover Curiosity is considered to be the largest rover that has been ever sent to Mars. Its secondary mission is to study the environment on Mars.
Curiosity's journey to Mars was not an easy feat. "The $2.5-billion MSL spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Nov. 26, 2011, and arrived on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, after a daring landing sequence that NASA dubbed 'Seven Minutes of Terror.' Because of Curiosity's weight, NASA determined that the past method of using a rolling method with land bags would probably not work. Instead, the rover went through an extremely complicated sequence of maneuvers to land."
In order to father information, Curiosity is equipped with a few tolls that are able to search for habitability.
