Nasa has published a brand new ‘postcard’ picture of a sand ridge on Mars.
The new shots were taken by the agency’s rover, Curiosity Mars, while it was parked at a sandy geographical feature nicknamed ‘Chocolatal’.
The pair of photos were captured at 9.56am on August 29 and 5.39pm on September 2 – Mars time – and were merged together after being sent back to Earth, creating a larger landscape shot showing morning and evening on the Red Planet.
Colour was added to the picture to bring it to life, with the blue on the right side representing morning, while the yellow on the left depicts sunset.
Curiosity is currently scanning the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, a three-mile tall mountain within Mars’ 96-mile-wide Gale Crater.
The crater’s rim is barely visible on the horizon of the picture, which was taken towards the hole’s floor.
The first image was taken on Curiosity’s 5000th Martian day, or sol, of its mission. A Martian day is around 39 minutes longer than a day on Earth.
Last month, Nasa released a panorama of 323 individual images taken by Curiosity’s mast camera between August 1 and 2 of a valley named ‘Valle Grande’.
Colour was again adapted to match the lighting conditions as they would be seen by the human eye on Earth.
The shot caught the rover’s tracks fading into the distance, showing where the robotic searcher had travelled through the valley.
Approximately the size of a car, the robotic rover was built by Nasa’s jet propulsion laboratory and is managed from Pasadena in California.
The rover has been on Mars since 2012 to find signs of microbial life.
Curiosity reached a milestone in August when it accumulated 1km of elevation as it climbed the slope of Mount Sharp.
It has also collected 42 powderised rock samples from holes drilled into the surface by its robotic arm.
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