14 DAY TRIAL // At the beginning of February, the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity had to climb over a 1-meter (3-foot) sand dune called Dingo Gap, in order to go about its business exploring the floor of Gale Crater. The image above shows the tracks the robot left behind as it did so.
Mission controllers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, took the decision to navigate the 1-ton rover over the dune in order to avoid going through a patch of ground covered in sharp rocks. Curiosity's wheels have already taken enough damage as it is.
The nuclear-powered robot had no trouble traversing the sand dune, mostly due to careful planning by JPL scientists. The machine is currently on its way towards the slopes of Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometer (3-mile) mountain made out of ejecta material from the asteroid impact that created Gale Crater.
Curiosity was deployed on the surface of Mars on August 6, 2012, after launching from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida, on November 26, 2011. The spacecraft was delivered to a heliocentric transfer orbit by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V delivery system.