Mars Rover Curiosity Takes a High Resolution Self-Portrait

Rover-self-portrait.jpg NASA's Curiosity rover just recently sent back a self-portrait showing the rover itself and the landscape surrounding it. The portrait isn't just one photo, but 54 individual photos all stitched together. The photos were taken by an extended arm with a camera pointing back at the rover, so you could even think of it as a panorama of Facebook self-photos, but without the duckface.

Curiosity's self-portrait is designed to give mission engineers the ability to check on the status of the rover, but it also provides a very cool look at the Martian landscape. The left side of the picture reveals four "scoop scars," where the rover scooped up dirt for analysis.

If you want to take a look at the individual shots that were used to make the high resolution photo, NASA has provided those as well.