🧭
Explorer,
📸
photographer,
⛰️
geologist,
🧪
chemist...
Mars Curiosity does it all!⁣
⁣
The rover captured images on Oct.
11 for this celebratory #selfie,
after its second-ever "wet chemistry"
experiment using solvents to help its portable laboratory detect certain carbon-based molecules important to the formation of life,
called organic compounds.
⁣
⁣
About 984 feet (300 meters)
behind the rover is Vera Rubin Ridge,
which Curiosity departed nearly a year ago.
Beyond the ridge,
you can see the floor of Gale Crater and the crater's northern rim.
Curiosity has been ascending Mount Sharp,
a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall)
mountain inside the crater.⁣
⁣
The individual images in this selfie were taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI),
a camera on the end of the rover's robotic arm.
The images are stitched together into a panorama;
the robotic arm isn't visible in the parts of the images used in the composite.⁣
⁣
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS⁣
⁣ #mars #rover #solarsystem #nasa #chemistry #robots

“That's here.
That's home.
That's us.”
–
Carl Sagan
Seeing Earth from space can alter an astronauts’
cosmic perspective,
a mental shift known as the “Overview Effect.”
First coined by space writer Frank White in 1987,
the Overview Effect is described as a feeling of awe for our home planet and a sense of responsibility for taking care of it.

See Earth from the vantage point of our astronauts in these perspective-changing views.

Credit:
NASA #NASA #space #science #earth

A trail of night lights ✨
✨
✨

This image compiles over 400 time-lapse photos taken by @astro_christina from the International Space Station (@ISS),
as the station traveled from Namibia toward the Red Sea on July 5,
2019.⁣
⁣
Here,
stationary features like cities appear as pale yellow-white dotted streaks;
many of the thinner dotted lines with darker orange hues are seasonal fires burning.
Northward,
you can see bright white lightning flashes from thunderstorms and above the horizon,
a faint green-yellow tracing of the upper atmosphere known as airglow.⁣
⁣
Image Credit:
NASA⁣
Caption:
Andrea Meado,
Jacobs Technology⁣
⁣ #startrails #stars #space #airglow #timelapse #nasa⁣