NASA's Curiosity Rover Takes The Best Selfies In The Universe

Editor’s note: This post was originally published by our partners at PopSugar Tech.

It’s been almost two years since the Curiosity rover landed on Mars in August 2012. But last week marked its first full Martian year (687 Earth days) roaming the planet. Lucky for us, NASA has been releasing photos of the Red Planet taken by the rover, which set out on its mission to discover if life ever existed on the stunning planet.

To commemorate its “birth,” Curiosity took a selfie, but it turns out it’s not its first. Ahead, check out all the truly stunning photos of the mysterious landscape that is out of this world.

Additional reporting by Katy Quigg

Looking straight down at the Gale Crater, the rover’s landing site. Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS]

Curiosity takes a “selfie” made up of dozens of high-res images using its rover arm camera to celebrate its one Martian year on the planet. [Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS]

Here we see the Curiosity rover — the bright blue figure near the large hill in the lower left area — and its tracks in this view from orbit. [Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona]

Cute! The Curiosity rover tweeted this, saying, “To drill or not to drill? Investigating my next potential drilling target on Mars.” [Source: Twitter user MarsCuriosity]

Earth and our moon look teeny tiny in this picture taken from Mars by the Curiosity rover. [Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/TAMU]

Here’s a picture taken at a location called “Sheepbed,” which shows well-defined veins filled with whitish minerals that we think is calcium sulfate. The veins form when water circulates through fractures, depositing minerals along the sides of the fracture. [Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS]