Sunrise, sunset..
To mark the recent occasion of Curiosity’s 5,000th Martian day on the Red Planet, the rover’s team created this postcard. It combines two panoramas, with blue colors representing images taken in the morning, and yellow colors for the images taken at dusk.
The rover’s deck can be seen in the foreground, including its can-shaped UHF antenna, used for sending data to orbiting spacecraft, and its finned Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, a nuclear power source, at its rear. The rover’s tracks can be seen trailing off in the distance.
Curiosity is in the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, a 3-mile-tall (5-kilometer-tall) mountain that sits within Gale Crater. This image looks down toward the crater floor, with the crater rim perceptible on the horizon.