The Curiosity rover is one of the coolest machines we ever sent into space. The rover is giving us a glimpse into the never-explored land of Mars by sending us beautiful images taken by its cameras everyday. Curiosity has 17 cameras on deck, which is the most of any NASA planetary missions to date. Take a look at what each camera does, and why some of the cameras shoot just Black and White, and some shoot color. Also, who do you think have more image resolution: the Nikon D800 or Curiosity rover?
There are 2 different types of cameras on the rover: The cameras that are in charge of navigation and helping the rover avoiding any obstacle are 1-megapixel black and white cameras. The second type are the scientific cameras, 2-megapixel full color cameras. Some of the cameras can actually shoot video, and as you can see in the video above - it works. The reason we don't get to see so many videos like this is that the file sizes are very big, and the daily downlink is very limited.
It takes selfies?
I like his explanation and the animation of how Curiosity takes selfies.
I was always wondering how it did that without seeing the arm.