Thursday, September 19, 2024

Marvel At This NASA Rover Image Of Earth And Mars Moon Phobos

Image More details: Visit website

Headlines:
Faharas News ... AI-Powered News Aggregator Real-Time News

The 10 moments from the 2024 MTV VMAs we⁘re still talking about have left fans buzzing. This year⁘s event,...

Drinking soy milk could lower blood pressure and cholesterol, according to a new study. Research from the University of...

Faharas News is an AI-driven news aggregator that provides real-time updates from a variety of sources. We do not take responsibility for the content or the external links provided.

Reference: Found here

#news

Earth feels like a big place when you're standing on it. Zoom out to a distant planet, however, and Earth becomes a blue dot. It's all about perspective. NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured a poignant view of Earth dancing in the sky with the Martian moon Phobos. The result is an ode to Curiosity's home planet and the human spirit of exploration. Here's the inside story about how the picture came about and what it means.

The image shows a rocky, steep butte along Mount Sharp, the massive central mountain in the Gale Crater where Curiosity is exploring. There's an expanse of dusty sky and then the moon Phobos with Earth as a blue dot just to its right. "It's the first time an image of the two celestial bodies have been captured together from the surface of Mars," the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Sept. 13. Mars has only two small moons, Phobos and Deimos. With a diameter of just 14 miles, Phobos is the larger of the two.

There was a small window to get it right on Sept. 5. The final image consists of five short exposures taken over two minutes combined with 12 long exposures, all from the Mast Camera mounted on the rover's "head." The capture took place an hour and 20 minutes after the sun went down. Lemmon was impressed by what Curiosity's camera saw during the dimness of twilight. "I'm surprised at the details you can see across the crater to the crater rim at the background," he says.

Curiosity has been on the red planet since 2012, making it the elder of NASA's two functioning Mars rovers. Perseverance is the other. Curiosity has a limited amount of energy available each day to conduct its science work, so the team has to juggle and balance the rover's tasks. "A lot of people gave up a chance to do something of their own to make sure we had a chance to do this," Lemmon says. That shows how important the photo was to Curiosity's team.

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

No comments:

Post a Comment