Categories: CuriosityMarsMars Science Laboratory

New Interactive Panorama Shows Curiosity’s View from the Dingo Gap Sand Dune

Curiosity’s View Past Tall Dune at edge of ‘Dingo Gap’ This photomosaic from Curiosity’s Navigation Camera (Navcam) taken at the edge of the entrance to the Dingo Gap shows a 3 foot (1 meter) tall dune and valley terrain beyond to the west, all dramatically back dropped by eroded rim of Gale Crater. View from the rover’s current position on Sol 528 (Jan. 30, 2014). The rover team may decide soon whether Curiosity will bridge the dune gap as a smoother path to next science destination. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer- kenkremer.com

Mars Panorama – Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 530 in world

“Red Rover, Red Rover, I’m looking right over… this sand dune on Mars,” said the Curiosity rover on Twitter, as well as quoting photographer Ansel Adams, “There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.”

This new interactive image put together by panoramacist Andrew Bodrov using the latest imagery from Curiosity allows you to nearly join the rover on Mars as it looks down across a sand dune and into the “Dingo Gap” area and the valley beyond.

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The rover team is considering driving across and through this meter high sand sand dune to reach their desired science destinations instead of going over terrain with sharp rocks which might poke more holes in the rover’s aluminum wheels.

You can read more about this region and see more panoramas and 3-D views in our most recent article by Ken Kremer.

Thanks to Andrew Bodrov for sharing this new interactive image, which were taken with the rover’s 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels width, includes 101 images taken on Sol 530 (Feb 1, 2014 here on Earth.)

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/