NASA photo captures the loneliness of the Mars Curiosity rover
If you squint very hard and move your face towards your computer screen, you'll see something truly remarkable.
You might not know it, but the blue-ish, purple-ish dot in the center of the above photograph is so much more than just a dot — it's NASA's Curiosity rover as seen from the agency's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
According to NASA, the image, taken earlier this month, was captured using a High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera.
The image shows the 10-foot-long, 9-foot-wide rover located on the northwestern flank of Mount Sharp, looking like a little blue ant while surrounded by a rocky terrain. And if you're wondering why the photograph's hues look so vivid, it's because the colors were enhanced to really make the rover and the surrounding surface more visible.
At the time the image was taken, NASA reported that the rover was in the middle of an "investigation of active sand dunes" on Mount Sharp, and was headed to examine "Vera Rubin Ridge."
The HiRISE captures several shots of the Curiosity rover around every three months to monitor and record changes like "dune migration or erosion." So if you're interested about the Curiosity rover's journey, be sure to stay tuned for more images.
For now, let us just continue to marvel at the dot.
Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.
