Latest Curiosity rover selfies show off Mars' red surface
A couple new selfies beamed back to Earth from NASA's Curiosity rover show the intrepid Mars explorer looking like a social media star on the red planet.
The new selfies were taken on May 11 as Curiosity posed at a sample site near the bottom of Mount Sharp.
The self-portraits -- one showing Curiosity facing toward the camera and one looking behind -- actually show a drill site where the rover collected some Martian rock to test.
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The photos also show Mount Sharp looming in the background.
These photos are the latest in a long line of selfies taken by Curiosity. The rover has snapped images of itself with sand dunes, rock formations and other objects of interest (much as humans do on Earth).
The intrepid rover takes these self portraits every now and then to give scientists a sense of what it's looking like after years on Mars. NASA is keeping a close eye on the car-sized robot's wheels to make sure they're functioning well as it roams the Martian dirt.
When combined, the two new self portraits make for a pretty cute gif.
Curiosity recently left some Martian sand dunes behind and took some drill samples at the Naukluft Plateau, where these selfies were taken.
And Curiosity is about to take on one of its biggest challenges yet.
"Now that we've skirted our way around the dunes and crossed the plateau, we've turned south to climb the mountain head-on," Curiosity project scientist Ashwin Vasavada, said in a statement.
"Since landing, we've been aiming for this gap in the terrain and this left turn. It's a great moment for the mission."
Mount Sharp has been Curiosity's destination since it first touched down in the Gale crater in 2012, and now that it's there, the rover will continue trying to piece together Mars' geological past.
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Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
