NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has never been shy around cameras. From iconic selfies to being spotted from space, its activities have been well-documented over the years.
But something new happened on February 28, the 4,466th Martian day – or sol – of its mission. Curiosity was caught mid-drive, possibly for the first time, by one of NASA’s Mars orbiters.
A rare glimpse of Curiosity
The image was taken by the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera, which is aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Scientists at the University of Arizona operate this camera, which offers a sharp view of the Martian surface. In the photo, Curiosity appears as a small, dark speck at the front of a long trail of tracks stretched across the Red Planet.
The tracks cover about 1,050 feet (320 meters) and reflect roughly 11 drives that started on February 2, 2025.
During these moves, Curiosity crawled along at a top speed of just 0.1 mph (0.16 kph), making its way from the Gediz Vallis channel toward its next science destination: a region that may hold boxwork formations created by ancient groundwater billions of years ago.
Why Curiosity is still roaming Mars
Curiosity wasn’t just sent to Mars to take pretty pictures. Its mission, which began with a dramatic landing in 2012, is all about asking a big question: Was Mars ever able to support small forms of life?
To answer that, the rover has been exploring the ancient environments of Gale Crater, drilling into rocks, analyzing soil, and studying the planet’s climate and geology.
Every discovery Curiosity makes helps build a clearer picture of what Mars was like, billions of years ago. Some of its biggest finds so far include evidence of ancient rivers, lakes, and the chemical ingredients necessary for life.
Even after more than a decade, Curiosity is still hard at work, pushing uphill to study higher and older layers of Martian history.
A closer look at Curiosity’s journey
Curiosity’s arrival at its next stop isn’t on a set timeline. Several factors can affect its progress, including how its navigation software handles the landscape and how steep the terrain becomes.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California work hand-in-hand with scientists to plan each day’s drive carefully.
“By comparing the time HiRISE took the image to the rover’s commands for the day, we can see it was nearly done with a 69-foot (21-meter) drive,” said Doug Ellison, Curiosity’s planning team chief at JPL.
HiRISE is built for incredible detail. Most of its images are in black and white, with a strip of color down the center to boost spatial resolution.
Although HiRISE has captured Curiosity in color in the past, this time the rover happened to fall inside the black-and-white section of the image.
Tracks that tell a story
In the latest image, Curiosity’s tracks stretch across the Martian surface and lead up to the base of a steep slope.
Since the image was taken, the rover has successfully climbed that slope. If everything goes smoothly, Curiosity is expected to reach its new science site within the next month or so.
The trail it left behind could remain visible for months, unless Martian winds sweep the marks away.
Every track, every footprint on Mars tells part of the story of a journey that’s been unfolding for more than a decade – and is still going strong.
What comes next for Mars exploration
Curiosity’s journey is just one piece of the bigger picture, a stepping stone in our long-term efforts to explore another world.
NASA and other space agencies are already planning the next steps to explore Mars even further, using the lessons learned from past and current missions.
Missions like Perseverance are already collecting rock samples that could someday be brought back to Earth for detailed study.
Future plans include launching more helicopters, building complex sample return missions, and even sending astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s – a goal that once seemed like pure science fiction.
Each discovery Curiosity makes helps shape and inspire these future missions. It reminds us that even the slow, careful drive of a lone rover can lay the groundwork for humanity’s bigger dreams beyond Earth.
Information for this article came from a press release by NASA’s JPL.
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