The American space agency NASA has prepared a high-quality panorama with the opportunity to study in detail the rocks of the Red Planet. The panorama, published on the department's website, was composed of 900 images with a total "mass" of 1.3 billion pixels.
The pictures were taken by the Curiosity rover from October 5 to November 16, 2012. Rover filmed with three cameras in the Rocknest area at the bottom of Gale Crater, where he collects samples of dust and rocks.
When zooming in on the photo, you can see "shiny objects" as they are labeled on the panorama, "a rectangle carved in stone", and even "a Martian bird in flight." “Definitely weird. But it looks like a bird in flight,”the caption says.
White object
Rectangle in stone
Promotional video:
The Curiosity rover landed on the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012. 10 scientific instruments are installed on board the device, designed for detailed geological and geochemical research, studying the atmosphere and climate of the planet, searching for water and its traces, organic substances. The tools are designed to determine if Mars was once habitable and whether there are places on it that are suitable for life now.
Meanwhile, British planetary scientists have determined that billions of years ago, the Red Planet had no less oxygen than the Earth.
Planetary scientists have studied ancient rocks from the Martian crater of Gusev, collected by the Spirit rover. Having determined the proportion of oxides and sulfur in them, they came to the conclusion that their amount exceeds that contained in meteorites of the same origin.
This surprised researchers, since meteorites formed much later than rocks on the Red Planet. If the analyzed minerals were about 3.7 billion years ago, then the meteorites are 180-1400 million years old. This prompted planetary scientists to think that the rocks absorbed oxygen during contact with Mars billions of years ago.