This Is What a Day on Mars Really Looks Like

NASA's Curiosity Rover has been on Mars for more than a decade, but in all that time it has never sat still and recorded a single day in its life on the Red Planet — until now.

In a new pair of time lapse videos released by NASA, Curiosity reveals what a day on Mars looks like from its perspective, from dawn to dusk. And, perhaps surprisingly, the Martian day — known as a sol — is much like a tranquil day on Earth. Albeit, a little more lonely.

Martian sols are slightly longer than on Earth — just under 25 hours, compared to our 24. In the black and white images, Curiosity's shadow slowly moves across the rocky Mars terrain over 12 hours of sunlight.

Despite being over a decade into its exploration of Mars’ surface, the time lapses capture the first time that NASA’s Curiosity team has asked the rover to sit still and photograph a single view over a day.

As the photos were being taken, the orbits of Mars and Earth were approaching a point where the sun lies directly between the two, which can interfere with the rover’s communications systems, leading to a temporary scaling back of its activities. 

The images were captured by the rover’s hazard-avoidance cameras, which are normally used to help the robot traverse rocks, slopes and other dangerous impediments in its way. Since landing on Mars in 2012, Curiosity has been navigating its way around an area known as the Gale Crater, capturing pictures and analyzing the chemical composition of the soil as it travels.