The Mars Curiosity Rover has just sent back an awe-inspiring selfie from what is known as the Mojave site -- an area of rock at the base of Mount Sharp on Mars.
The images were taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera that is located at the end of the rover's robotic arm. NASA stitched the picture together from a series of images taken last month, and released it Tuesday.
The rover's drill recently collected the mission's second sample from Mount Sharp, near the Mojave site. The Mojave location is thought to contain dissolved salts as well as crystal-shaped minerals that may have been formed by the evaporation of lake or river water.
Here's how NASA describes the setting:
The pale "Pahrump Hills" outcrop surrounds the rover, and the upper portion of Mount Sharp is visible on the horizon. Darker ground at upper right and lower left holds ripples of wind-blown sand and dust.
The annotated version of the panoramic photo shows some of the sites that Curiosity has investigated already, including the wonderfully-named "Pahrump Hills" and "Confidence Hills."
[img src="http://admin.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Mars-Rover-Mojave-Selfie-Annotated.jpg" caption="Annotated version of the Mars Rover "Mojave" Selfie. This is a mosaic image put together from a series of images taken in Jan. 2015." credit="NASA/JPL" alt="Mars Rover Mojave Selfie"]
The same process of using wrist and turret motions on the rover's arm to get the component images was used to put together similar views from three other locations earlier in the mission.
The arm's maneuvering obscured the arm from the frame, however, so you'll have to imagine that a giant robot arm is supporting the camera.