Curiosity’s ChemCam Views Summit and Cliffs Past Gale Crater

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured this view of a mountain almost 57 miles (91 kilometers) away and outdoors of Gale Crater, the place Curiosity landed in 2012. The rover is at the moment within the foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain throughout the crater.

Estimated to be 8,202 toes (2,500 meters) tall, the mountain’s summit simply peeks over the crater rim within the panorama. It has by no means been considered with this a lot element. Toward the decrease left, darkish rocky outcrops are seen.

Curiosity captured the view with its black-and-white Remote Micro Imager, or RMI. Part of the rover’s ChemCam instrument, RMI can be utilized like a small telescope to see distant options, making a round “spyglass” view. Ten RMI photos taken on Aug. 28, 2025 (the 4,643rd Martian day, or sol of the mission) had been stitched collectively to create the mosaic.

Curiosity was constructed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as a part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, in Los Alamos, New Mexico, developed ChemCam in partnership with scientists and engineers funded by the French nationwide house company (CNES), the University of Toulouse, and the French nationwide analysis company (CNRS).

For extra about Curiosity, go to:

science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity.