The Curiosity rover has spent more than 1,300 days on the Red Planet, and despite the relentless hostility of its environment, it continues to operate flawlessly. This has allowed NASA to capture impressive images of the terrain surrounding the rover, and earlier this week the agency decided to release a 360-degree 4K video so everyone can explore every stone and every pit, either directly in our browsers or with a virtual reality headset.
We still have a couple of decades of research and development ahead of us before we can visit Mars. If there's one thing we've learned from the novel "The Martian" and its solid film adaptation, it's that even with all the technology on our side, no one is capable of planning a perfect mission. The number of details that can kill a human on Mars is too large, so the best alternative remains remote exploration through robots. That brings us to the current state of Curiosity, which is very close to Mount Sharp. Along its journey, the rover has managed to transmit a great deal of information, to such an extent that NASA was able to prepare a 4K 360-degree video for everyone to enjoy.
According to the official report, the images of the so-called "Naukluft Plateau" were taken by Curiosity's Mastcam system on April 4. NASA explains that this is a particularly ancient area, where sandstone is covered by multiple layers of dust that has been there for a long time, and which probably formed during an even drier epoch of the planet. The panorama has adjustments that in part reproduce the appearance of the sky and the rocks as if they were observed at a terrestrial noon (I guess non-believers are going to have a feast with that fact).
As always, the recommendation is to watch the 360-degree video in the highest resolution possible. 1080p should be enough for a basic experience, but the real quality of the images emerges once we choose the 4K option.
