NASA showed new panoramas of Mars

When back in 1976, the rover “Viking-1”for the first time in the history of mankind made the first black-and-white photo of the surface of a red planet, astronomical science completely changed its course, moving to a new stage of its development. After 45 years, the Opportunity rover was able to provide specialists with a detailed panorama of the Martian landscape, showing the desert world of our space neighbor. But can the last photograph of the famous rover be remarkable?

The very first photograph in the history of mankind, taken from the surface of Mars

What does the surface of Mars look like?

A new 360-degree image of Mars was shotthe famous rover “Opportunity”, whose planned 90 days of exploration of Martian sands lasted for 15 years of continuous trips on the surface of the Red Planet. According to the portal sciencealert.com, the image taken by the rover was not only one of the most impressive, but also the last, farewell. The famous photograph was taken at the place where the device was caught by a powerful dust storm, which deprived the device of the ability to recharge due to solar energy for a long time. Over the last 29 days of its operation, “Opportunity” has created a series of 354 individual images, which were then sent to NASA for analysis and subsequent processing.

See also: NASA scientists have found the perfect place to land on Mars

The last panorama of the rover “Opportunity”

The last image of the rover clearly visiblethe edge of the Endeavor Crater, towering far away. A little to the left of this place, the tracks of the rover begin their descent from the horizon and go down to the geological features of the Martian landscape, which NASA scientists hope to study in more detail in the near future. The most promising places to study, in this case, should be the bottom of the Valley of Perseverance and the bottom of the Endeavor Crater already mentioned above.

When after sending the last photothe Martian surface, the rover was completely silent, and NASA experts decided to complete the mission, the so-called “last words” “Opportunity” almost instantly dispersed over the network: “My battery is low and it's getting dark” (translated: “My battery is low and it's getting dark"). Of course, the rover, even despite all its technical complexity, could not say anything like this, and the author of the dying words of the device was one of the scientific reporters of the publication “ABC 7”. Be that as it may, the phrase, like nothing else, best describes the latest data from the rover, which mention a sharp decrease in the transparency of the atmosphere and a drop in the level of generated energy. The result of such an event can be seen in the last photograph taken by the rover: in the lower right corner of the image, a black and white area clearly emerges, which Opportunity simply did not have enough strength to “colorize” in real colors.

Undoubtedly, one day the futurea space traveler in the person of a person or a robot will surely meet with a rover lost in Martian sands and may even find a way to bring it back to working condition. In the meantime, this momentous moment has not occurred, let us together follow the latest news from the surface of the Red Planet in our Yandex.Zen and Telegram channels.