NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has clicked a new selfie near a sandstone outcrop in Gale Crater’s Kimberley region of the Red Planet.
The laser-armed, one-tonne rover used the camera at the end of its arm to take dozens of images which were later combined into a self-portrait.
The site in the background of the selfie features numerous sandstone layers caused by eons of exposure to wind erosion, ABC News reported.
A 1.6 centimetre diameter test hole drilled by the rover into the rock ledge is visible in the images.
The view does not include the rover’s arm which took the pictures.
Most of the component frames of the mosaic view were taken during the 613th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars.
After landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity fulfilled in its first year of operations its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favourable for microbial life.
