Curiosity on Mars: A Wall of Gale Crater
If you could stand on Mars, what would you see?
The above image
is a digitally re-colored approximation of what you might see if the
above Martian landscape had occurred on Earth.
Images from Mars false-colored in this way are called
white balanced
and useful for planetary scientists to identify rocks and
landforms similar to Earth.
The image is a high resolution version of a distant wall of
Gale Crater
captured by the Curiosity rover that
landed on Mars last week.
A corresponding true color image
exists showing how this scene actually appears
on Mars.
The robotic Curiosity
rover continues to check itself over and accept
new programming from Earth before it begins to roll across Mars and
explore a landscape
that has the appearance of being an
unusually layered dried river bed.