NASA's Curiosity Rover Captures a Martian Day, From Dawn to Dusk

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured a 12-hour sequence of its own shadow moving across the Martian surface, offering a rare glimpse of a Martian day. The black-and-white videos, recorded on Nov. 8, the 4,002nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, were taken using the rover’s Hazard-Avoidance Cameras, or Hazcams.

The recordings were part of the final set of commands sent to Curiosity before the start of Mars solar conjunction, a period when the Sun blocks communication between Earth and Mars. During this time, missions pause sending commands to spacecraft, though they maintain basic health check-ins. With the rover’s activities scaled back, the team used the Hazcams to capture 12 hours of images, hoping to observe weather phenomena like clouds or dust devils.

Although no significant weather was observed, the videos show the rover’s shadow shifting as the day progresses from morning to evening. The first video, captured by the front Hazcam, shows the rover’s silhouette moving across Gediz Vallis, a valley on Mount Sharp. The second video, from the rear Hazcam, captures the view of the slopes of Mount Sharp and the floor of Gale Crater.

The images reveal details such as the rover’s robotic arm shadow and a calibration target used to test the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer. As the day progresses, changes in exposure time and sensor noise become visible, including “hot pixels” that appear as white specks in the final frames. Some artifacts in the videos, such as a small black spot, were caused by cosmic rays, while others resulted from heat from the rover’s power system affecting the camera sensors.