Where In The Universe #57

Are you ready for another Where In The Universe Challenge? Take a look and see if you can name where in the Universe this image is from. Give yourself extra points if you can name the spacecraft responsible for the image. As usual, we’ll provide the image today, but won’t reveal the answer until tomorrow. This gives you a chance to mull over the image and provide your answer/guess in the comment section. Please, no links or extensive explanations of what you think this is — give everyone the chance to guess.

UPDATE: The answer has now been posted below. Don’t peek before you guess!

It was fun to have an image that (finally!) not everyone knew at first glance. I was feeling a little nostalgic and missing the Phoenix lander, so I chose an image from that mission — which was going on and going strong a year ago.

This is a pile of Mars soil that the Phoenix lander excavated with its scoop. This pile was called “Caterpillar” and the image was taken on August 24, 2008.

The conical pile is about 10 centimeters (4 inches) tall, and was taken from several trenches that the lander dug. For more about the image, see the Phoenix gallery.