This view of a test rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, results from advance testing of arm positions and camera pointings for taking a low-angle self-portrait of NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover.
This rehearsal in California led to a dramatic Aug. 5, 2015, selfie of Curiosity, online at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19807. Curiosity’s arm-mounted Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera took 92 of component images that were assembled into that mosaic. The rover team positioned the camera lower in relation to the rover body than for any previous full self-portrait of Curiosity.
This practice version was taken at JPL’s Mars Yard in July 2013, using the Vehicle System Test Bed (VSTB) rover, which has a test copy of MAHLI on its robotic arm.
MAHLI was built by Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project’s Curiosity rover.
More information about Curiosity is online at https://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS