A new NASA video lets you see Mars from every angle

You don’t need to be an astronaut to explore Mars. NASA has released a 360-degree view video of the red planet from the perspective of the Curiosity rover. The video below shows stitched-together images of Namib Dune taken by the rover on 18 December last year.

Curiosity’s investigation of the dunes in the Bagnold field is the first time sand dunes have been studied anywhere other than Earth. The field is along the rover’s route towards Mount Sharp, a mountain at the centre of the Gale Crater.

NASA had originally expected the Curiosity rover to last only two years for a primary science mission, however it has doubled its expected lifespan and will continue to carry out missions and research on Mars.

Source: NASA

NASA’s Mars Exploration Program is currently focused on the exploration strategy “seek signs of life”, moving away from the previous long-term aim of “follow the water”. To this end, the Curiosity rover, part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL), is currently seeking out evidence of organic material.

Previous missions have found that water once flowed on Mars, and last September NASA announced evidence that water flows on present-day Mars during the summer months.

John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said at the time: “Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water' in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected.”

Future missions are being designed to seek out life in places identified as potential past or present habitable environments. With NASA expecting these programmes to allow us to explore Mars in ways we never have before, with high-resolution images and the return of Martian soil and rock samples for analysis on Earth.

The programme’s main objective is for humans to eventually be able to explore the planet. NASA’s Journey to Mars aims to send humans there in 2030, with the aim of answering “one of the fundamental mysteries of the cosmos: Does life exist beyond Earth?”

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