NASA Teases With Its Mars Explorations By Tweeting A 360 Degree Picture Of The Red Planet

NASA simply can't get enough of Mars so they posted a 360-degree picture of what is it like being in the red planet. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California Institute of Technology teased the public by posting a tweet saying:

Join me on #Mars amid Murray Buttes. #360video best on PC or @YouTube app https://t.co/yhP65Vl23u #JourneyToMars pic.twitter.com/yFUjeqQmvw

— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) August 19, 2016

The said picture was captured by NASA's Curiosity Rover using an integrated Mast Camera at Murray Buttes. The images were captured on August 5, 2016, which coincidentally landed at the Rover's 4th anniversary in Mars. The mission of the rover was to conduct observations about the conditions of Mars and learn about its history. Curiosity rover concluded in its observations that there are remnants of water and other compounds essential to life forms. Some of the evidences gathered in the mission suggests that Mars might a habitable environment before but conditions grew worse that no life forms were able to survive anymore (sounds familiar right? *Global warming).

Currently, Curiosity Rover is examining different rock formations in the planet looking for geologic patterns that reveal more information in the red planet's past. The data gathered by this mission together with other ongoing explorations will be crucial in preparation to several NASA's future missions to the red planet which includes the first manned mission to Mars and building a space station by 2021.

In a statement from NASA Mars Science Laboratory, "To find out, the rover carries the biggest, most advanced suite of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the martian surface. The rover will analyze samples scooped from the soil and drilled from rocks. The record of the planet's climate and geology is essentially "written in the rocks and soil" -- in their formation, structure, and chemical composition. The rover's onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and the local geologic setting in order to detect chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the martian environment was like in the past."