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From Curiosity, Another Martian Landscape

NASA has released two more pictures from the Curiosity Mars rover.

One is a color image that shows that wall of the Gale Crater and the other is a close up shot of the area excavated by the rover's descent stage rocket engines.

We've posted the white-balanced version of the photos. In theory those should appear more like what Mars would look like if you were using your eyes.

With the loose debris blasted away by the rockets, details of the underlying materials are clearly seen. Shown in the inset in the figure are pebbles up to 1.25 inches across (upper two arrows) and a larger clast 4 inches long protruding up by about 2 inches  from the layer in which it is embedded.
/ NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
/
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
With the loose debris blasted away by the rockets, details of the underlying materials are clearly seen. Shown in the inset in the figure are pebbles up to 1.25 inches across (upper two arrows) and a larger clast 4 inches long protruding up by about 2 inches from the layer in which it is embedded.

Also of note: The Wall Street Journal has started stringing together a 360-degree view of the place where Curiosity landed. It's still incomplete, but the paper is adding photos as they come in.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.