August 8, 2012
The image comparison below shows a view through a Hazard-Avoidance camera on NASA's Curiosity rover before and after the clear dust cover was removed. Both images were taken by a camera at the front of the rover. Mount Sharp, the mission's ultimate destination, looms ahead.
The view on the left, with the dust cover on, is one quarter of full resolution, while the view on the right is full resolution.
Mount Sharp, is located inside the 154 kilometres-wide Gale Crater, which sits just south of the Martian equator. Ii looks strikingly similar to California's Mojave Desert with its looming mountains and hanging haze,
Each of Gale Crater's geological layers is a page in the story of the planet. Stuart Clarke says that the outline of Mars's life story has already been sketched. It starts billions of years ago when Mars was a warmer, wetter, more habitable place and ends in today's barren, airless desert.
The question is whether this was a gradual process, in which Mars changed slowly over a billion or so years, or whether it was much quicker. A gradual scenario may be more conducive to the establishment of widespread life in Mars's past.
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