Curiosity Takes a Navcam Selfie

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured this selfie using its left black-and-white navigation camera, which is mounted on its mast, or "head," on Feb. 3, 2024, the 4,086th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The selfie is made up of 36 individual images that were stitched together after being sent back to Earth.

This warped view is different than the color selfies Curiosity has taken in the past using the camera on the end of its robotic arm, called the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. With its arm acting as a kind of selfie stick, Curiosity can show more of its body and surroundings.

Instead, the images from the navigation camera on the mast are displayed as a polar projection; the black hole in the center is where the mast is located on the rover, an area which it can't image.

Curiosity was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more about Curiosity, visit: http://mars.nasa.gov/msl