NASA Probe Captures ‘Postcard’ of Mars That Blends Day and Night
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its black-and-white navigation cameras to capture a panorama made up of photos taken at two different times of day on November 18, 2025. Although on the Red Planet, that time period spanned both the 4,722nd and 4,723rd Martian days, or sols.
The panoramas were captured at 4:15 P.M. on Sol 4,722 and 8:20 A.M. on Sol 4,723, local Mars time. After the panoramas were merged together, color was later added for an artistic interpretation of the scene — with blue representing the morning panorama and yellow representing the afternoon one.
The resulting “postcard” is similar to ones the rover took in June 2023. Back then, PetaPixel spoke with Doug Ellison from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in southern California, who explained the picture was years in the making.
NASA explains that the scene captured on November 18 shows Curiosity at the top of a ridge referred to as a boxwork formation. These formations crisscross a region in the lower foothills of Mount Sharp, a three-mile-tall (five-kilometer-tall) mountain which Curiosity has been climbing since 2014.
Curiosity used the drill on the end of its robotic arm to collect a rock sample from the top of this ridge at a spot nicknamed “Nevado Sajama.” This view looks north across the boxwork formations and downslope of Mount Sharp toward the floor of Gale Crater, a vast impact crater the mountain is located within.
The boxwork formations are believed to have been created billions of years ago when water on ancient Mars dripped through rock cracks, carrying minerals with them. The minerals hardened after the water dried up; eons later, wind sandblasted the softer rock around these hardened minerals, exposing the ridges Curiosity is exploring today. These ridges may reveal more about the planet’s watery past.
Earlier this year, Curiosity captured fascinating photographs of a rock on Mars that closely resembles coral found on Earth.
