NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover takes a Selfie on the Red Planet

Who said that a robot can’t be a good photographer and have fun when it wants? In fact, it’s highly plausible that robots will do most of our daily activities in the future, including taking photos for us. NASA’s Curiosity rover is already training for those moments, and it starts by taking a selfie on the Red Planet.

The Curiosity rover recently set a record for the steepest terrain it’s ever climbed, and thus it decided to take a selfie. The outcome may not be perfect, but it’s still pretty good for a robot:

Besides taking photos, Curiosity doesn’t have that name for nothing. Its main mission is to find out if Mars could have supported microbial life many years ago, maybe even billions.

How are the selfies taken?

Doug Ellison, a Curiosity camera operator at JPL, said:

We get asked so often how Curiosity takes a selfie,

We thought the best way to explain it would be to let the rover show everyone from its own point of view just how it’s done.

However, a video posted on YouTube by NASA JPL itself better explains the process:

Astronomers keep searching for answers regarding what Mars is made of. If humanity really wants to land on it or maybe even build a colony there in the far future, we need as much data as possible. While it may sound like pure science fiction now, space agencies around the world are seriously considering the idea of colonizing the Red Planet.

Mars is way farther away from Earth than the Moon is, so that’s why it’s so difficult to reach our neighboring planet. Humanity have been to the Moon for the first time in 1969, but it takes much more effort and knowledge to build a feasible plan of at least landing the first humans to Mars.

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