CURIOSITY SELFIE: A self-portrait taken by Curiosity at ‘Murray Buttes’ on lower Mount Sharp in September 2016. The panorama is made up of 60 images taken by the
Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover’s arm. (The view does not include the rover’s arm nor the MAHLI camera itself). These Martian buttes
and mesas, with their distinctive layering, have been revealed by Curiosity to be eroded remnants of ancient sandstone that originated when winds deposited sand after
lower Mount Sharp had formed. This was then buried, chemically altered by groundwater, then exposed again by erosion to form a landscape not dissimilar to that of the
deserts of the American south-west. The informal name Murray Buttes was chosen as a tribute to Bruce Murray (1931-2013), a member of the science teams for NASA’s
earliest missions to Mars who later served as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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