During the month of April Mars will be in conjunction relative to the Earth. This means the Sun is in the line-of-sight between Earth and Mars, and communication between the two planets is almost impossible. For conjunction, the rovers and orbiting spacecraft at Mars continue to operate, but do not send the data to Earth. This recorded data will be sent to Earth when Mars moves away from the sun and the line-of-sight between Earth and Mars is reestablished. During conjunction the THEMIS image of the day will be a visual tour of Gale Crater, the location of the newest rover Curiosity. Today's image of Gale crater is east of the landing site. It shows the northern extent of the dunes, and the layers in Mt. Sharp are visible at the bottom of the image.
Orbit Number: 10706 Latitude: -4.28334 Longitude: 137.702 Instrument: VIS Captured: 2004-05-13 20:40
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University
Note: This is the third in a series of images in which the THEMIS team is currently showing the northern ring of Gale Crater, between the impact crater's rim to the north and Mount Sharp to the south. The images are being shown from west to east. All of the images in this series I will name "Gale Crater (XXXX) #Y", in which XXXX is the year in which the photo was actually taken, and Y is the sequence number (1 through...).
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