NASA has posted two new black and white videos of its Curiosity Rover capturing a Martian day, from dusk to dawn on November 8, which happened to be the 4002nd Martian day of the mission.
In the first video, the Curiosity Rover can be seen using its black and white Hazcams to capture a 12-hour window of the Martian day. Everything dynamically changes, from the shadow that the rover casts on Mars’ surface to how it goes dark. The video is from Gediz Vallis, a valley on Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometer-tall mountain in Gale Crater.
“Instructions to record the videos were part of the last set of commands beamed up to Curiosity just before the start of Mars solar conjunction, a period when the Sun is between Earth and Mars,” NASA says. But plasma from the Sun can interfere with radio communications, so “missions hold off on sending commands to Mars spacecraft for several weeks during this time.”
NASA further notes that Curiosity’s Hazcams are typically used for identifying rocks, slopes, and other hazards that may be dangerous for the rovers to traverse. However, due to the rover’s other activities being intentionally scaled back ahead of the conjunction, NASA used this opportunity to let the Hazcams record 12 hours of snapshots for the first time ever—in an attempt to capture clouds on Mars and “dust devils” to gain a better understanding of Mars’ weather patterns.
Additionally, a second video captures footage from the rear Hazcam, looking northwest down the slopes of Mount Sharp. In the footage, a cosmic ray striking the camera sensor is visible, materializing as a small black artifact in the 17th frame.
NASA further claims that the noise and bright flashes in the video are due to a number of factors, including heat from the spacecraft’s power system and long exposure times.
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