Last updated February 21, 2018 at 11:04 am
Mars rover looks back on a five-year journey of discovery.
One panoramic image has captured the epic 18 kilometre journey from its 2012 landing site in Gale Crater up the slopes of Mount Sharp.

A selfie of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover on Vera Rubin Ridge. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
Mount Sharp stands in the middle of Gale Crater, which is 154 kilometres in diameter.

An annotated image charts Curiosity’s course. Credit: NASA
MAVEN has much greater data capacity than the NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and Mars Odyssey orbiter which usually relay information from Curiosity. But the nature of MAVEN’s elliptical orbit makes less reliable for optimal relays.
“MAVEN definitely has the potential to move lots of data for us, and we expect to make even more use of it in the future,” said JPL’s Roy Gladden, manager of NASA’s Mars Relay Network Office said in a news release.
Curiosity is set to resume drilling for rock and soil samples after more than a year after being hampered by mechanical problems. NASA engineers are testing a workaround to the problem.
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