This Haunting Image Is the First Orbital View of Curiosity Moving Across Mars

For seemingly the archetypal clip ever, the Curiosity rover connected Mars has been spotted mid-drive from orbit, a speck of quality beingness connected the different barren and grayscale landscape.

The image, taken connected February 28, 2025 (Sol 4,466—a leap time present connected Earth!), shows Curiosity arsenic a tiny acheronian blot astatine the extremity of a rover way way that stretches astir 1,050 feet (320 meters) crossed the Martian surface. It’s the orbital equivalent of a candid camera, courtesy of the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

While HiRISE has snapped Curiosity before, this marks the archetypal clip we’ve seen it mid-stride—erm, roll—caught successful the process of completing a 69-foot (21-meter) drive—a information confirmed by matching timestamps with the rover’s bid logs. Curiosity’s apical speed? A blistering 0.1 mph (0.16 kilometers per hour). No, it won’t triumph immoderate races—at slightest compared to vehicles connected Earth—but the rover is steady, hardy, and unbothered by the lack of state stations.

The tracks, crunched into the Martian terrain implicit 11 abstracted drives made since February 2, were dug arsenic Curiosity made its mode from the planet’s Gediz Vallis transmission toward its adjacent subject target: a rocky portion that whitethorn diagnostic boxwork formations, perchance shaped by groundwater successful the planet’s past past.

The caller representation shows the rover astatine the basal of a steep slope—one it’s since ascended en way to that rocky location. How agelong it volition instrumentality Curiosity to get depends connected the terrain ahead, the rover’s navigation software, and the regularly updated plans from NASA engineers, who steer the rover and enactment with scientists to prioritize its targets.

Interestingly, HiRISE usually captures images with a portion of colour down the center, but Curiosity landed successful the camera’s black-and-white portion this time. So alas—no full-color Martian glamour shot—but still, it’s a stunner. A lonely speck, chugging up an alien slope, caught successful the enactment from more than 150 miles (241 km) overhead.