A composite panorama of Mars taken by the mobile rover Curiosity at 4:15 p.m. on the 4,722nd sol and at 8:20 a.m. on the 4,723rd sol; Curiosity appears at bottom right, with the reddish sky at left showing afternoon and the blue sky at right showing sunrise./Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

On the last day of the year, a New Year's card arrived from Mars. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on the 30th (local time) released a single image captured by the Curiosity rover that shows a day on Mars. Curiosity appears at the lower right of the photo; the left shows the late afternoon turning yellow, and the right shows the blue sky of morning. It is as if it were previewing today's last sunset of the year and tomorrow's first sunrise of the new year.

◇A scene of the old year setting and the new year rising

Curiosity is a mobile rover that moves on six wheels. It was launched from Earth on Nov. 26, 2011, and landed Aug. 6 the following year in Gale Crater near the Martian equator. The rover is 2.9 meters long, 2.2 meters tall, 2.7 meters wide, and weighs 900 kilograms. The wheel diameter is 50 centimeters. Overall, it is about the size of a car. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is conducting the Curiosity mission.

NASA researchers on Nov. 18 ordered Curiosity to photograph the landscape twice to create this postcard. The shots were taken at 4:15 p.m. on the 4,722nd sol of the mission and at 8:20 a.m. on the 4,723rd sol. The team combined two black-and-white images and added color to make the times of day clear at a glance. Blue represents the morning panorama, and yellow represents the afternoon panorama.

NASA originally set the mission duration at two years, but Curiosity is still operating more than 10 years later. As of Dec. 31, 2025, Curiosity is on its 4,764th sol on Mars. In Earth time, that is 4,895 days, or 13 years and 147 days. Curiosity's mission is to study Mars' climate and geology and determine whether Gale Crater once had an environment suitable for life.

In this image, Curiosity is atop a ridge known as a boxwork terrain. Boxwork is a distinctive spiderweb- or lattice-like geologic structure found on the lower slopes of Mount Sharp within the 154-kilometer-wide Gale Crater. It is thought to have formed when groundwater flowed into cracks in rock during a time when Mars had abundant water.

The mobile rover Curiosity photographs itself at the base of Mount Sharp on Mars in Oct 2015./Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

◇Similar postcards also arrived in 2021 and 2023

Curiosity previously sent similar postcards in Nov. 2021 and June 2023. On Nov. 16, 2021, the 3,299th day since arriving on Mars, Curiosity shot panorama images at 8:30 a.m. and 4:10 p.m. from the flank of Mount Sharp. As it moves, Curiosity uses its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture a 360-degree view of the surroundings.

The photo captures a view looking down Mount Sharp, which rises 5 kilometers high and which Curiosity has been climbing since 2014. At the far right is Rafael Navarro Mountain, named after a Curiosity team scientist who died in 2021. Beyond it rises the upper part of Mount Sharp, which is much higher than the area Curiosity is exploring.

On Nov 16, 2021, the 3,299th day since Curiosity arrived on Mars, the rover captured panoramas at 8:30 a.m. and 4:10 p.m. from the flank of Mount Sharp and combined them into a composite image./Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

The 2023 image was made by coloring and compositing black-and-white navigation camera panoramas of Marker Band Valley taken twice on April 8. Curiosity captured the panoramas at 9:20 a.m. and 3:40 p.m. Mars time. As before, blue was added to the sections taken in the morning and yellow to the sections taken in the afternoon.

In the photo, the distant area beyond Curiosity's driving path is Marker Band Valley, where the rover found traces of an ancient lake. The sinuous region shows ripple marks left on rock surfaces by water that once flowed in the lake. NASA initially judged that sulfates there were evidence of the ancient lake. The explanation was that as the water dried up, minerals rich in salts such as sulfates remained.

The ripple traces that Curiosity found in 2023 were assessed as clearer evidence of the lake's existence. NASA researchers estimated that billions of years ago Mars had a shallow lake, and as ripples formed, they stirred up sediments on the bottom and over time etched ripples into the rock surface. The postcard from Mars is once again reminding us how precious Earth, still home to life, is.

A composite panorama made from images Curiosity captured at 9:20 a.m. and 3:40 p.m. local Mars time on Apr 8, 2023; at the time, Curiosity identified ripple marks left by an ancient Martian lake./Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

References

NASA (2025), https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/curiosity-sends-holiday-postcard-from-mars/

NASA (2023), https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory/curiosity-rover/nasas-curiosity-captures-martian-morning-afternoon-in-new-postcard/

NASA (2021), https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/jpl/nasas-curiosity-rover-sends-a-picture-postcard-from-mars/?site=msl

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