NASA's Mars Orbiter captures an image of the Curiosity rover amid rocky mountainside terrain

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured a view of the Curiosity rover amid rocky mountain terrain on Mars on 5 June, two months before the 5th anniversary of Curiosity rover. The picture shows the car-size rover heading towards its next destination. The rover appears as a Blue dot in a background of dark sand and rocks. The rover is about 10 feet long but looks tiny in the picture. The rover landed on Mars on 6 August 2011. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a multipurpose spacecraft designed to explore and conduct reconnaissance from the Mars orbit. It is the most powerful telescope ever sent to Mars. The image was taken when Curiosity was investigating active sand dunes lower on Mount Sharp and Vera Rubin Ridge. The image was taken from the orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera. The HiRISE camera was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp in Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project and Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The University of Arizona and Tucson operate the HiRISE camera. HiRISE clicks images of Curiosity a few times each year.