English: PIA22545: Panorama of Vera Rubin Ridge - Mars Curiosity Rover - August 9, 2018^[1]

NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on Aug. 9, 2018, showing its current location on Mars' Vera Rubin Ridge. The panorama includes skies darkened by a fading global dust storm and a rare view of the rover itself.

After snagging a new rock sample on August 9, 2018 (Sol 2137), NASA's Curiosity rover surveyed its surroundings on Mars, producing a 360-degree panorama of its current location on Vera Rubin Ridge. The scene is presented with a color adjustment that approximates white balancing, to resemble how the rocks and sand would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. Two versions are included here: one with scale bars, and one without.

The panorama includes umber skies, darkened by a fading global dust storm. It also includes a rare view by the Mast Camera of the rover itself, revealing a thin layer of dust on Curiosity's deck. In the foreground is the rover's most recent drill target, named "Stoer" after a town in Scotland near where important discoveries about early life on Earth were made in lakebed sediments.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.