Mostly Mute Monday: Marvelous Mars
“In 2012, Mars Science Laboratory performed the first ever robotically-controlled soft landing on Mars of a spacecraft of such magnitude: nearly half a tonne. Months later, as martian winter approached, Curiosity took full advantage of its state-of-the-art equipment to take the first ever billion-pixel panorama of its location…”When Curiosity landed on the martian surface in 2012, surviving “seven minutes of terror,” it went straight to work, examining its surroundings and teaching us about the martian geology of its region. But by time the end of the (Earth) year came around, it began to embark upon a different project: constructing the first billion-pixel mosaic panorama of the Red Planet’s surface. The results, well, spectacularly speak for themselves.
