New pictures show NASA's Curiosity Rover on Mars via the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in December The Leicester Mercury reported Monday.
The orbiter took the shots from 300 kilometers away while looking down on the red planet The Mercury reported. The rover appears as a tiny spectacle as it is about to embark on a trail on Mars' surface.
"The HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter keeps an eye on our progress, sending back photos every few months," Dr. John Bridges, a space scientist at the University of Leicester said on his blog The Mercury reported. Leicester is involved with helping NASA decipher information from the rover. "A recently captured image taken on Dec. 11 shows the tracks and rover as we pick our way around impact craters and their boulder fields," Bridges said on the blog.
The rover had a very long journey on the red planet, landing last August to begin taking in its air and further investigating its certain aspects BBC News reported.
Dr. Geronimo Villanueva who examines the red planet's atmosphere using telescopes from the Earth told BBC News more accurate measurements needed to be collected from the rover before more sound conclusions could be made.
While telescopes and satellites have apparently seen small but large amounts of the gas, the rover has not been able to pick-up any signs of it BBC News reported. Despite the latest results, researchers have kept hope alive that the gas' smell might indicate there's life on Mars. Ninety-five percent of methane in the atmosphere is made by microbial organisms BBC News reported.
The Rover discovered rare meteorites through its Sample Analysis at Mars tool in October the American Geophysical Union reported in a press release. The findings included two kinds of argon gas in argon 36, and argon 38 the press release reported.
