There are a look of tricks hidden inside the $2.5 billion Mars Rover Curiosity. Among them are the ability to analyse complex soil samples for signs of life, to drive very long distances up a mountain... and to take awesome selfies.
NASA unveiled this incredible new picture taken by the rover, of itself, at the Mojave Site on Mount Sharp in January 2015.
And while you might think this photo is suspicious -- "who's taking the photograph?" -- there are no Martian astronauts just out of shot. Instead the picture was stitched together from dozens of images taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on its robotic arm.
"Compared with the earlier Curiosity selfies, we added extra frames for this one so we could see the rover in the context of the full Pahrump Hills campaign," said rover team member Kathryn Stack at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"From the Mojave site, we could include every stop we've made during the campaign."
