July 20th, 2018: Curiosity Pictures

In the now over 2,000 days Curiosity has been roving over the surface of Mars, it’s taken many pictures.
Alan Taylor at The Atlanic has compiled some of the cool ones.

First the camera had to be calibrated with this penny, the first year of the Lincoln series.



The Black Dunes...



Strange layered rocks...



The meteorite...



Lots of points...



Raping and pillaging...



Curiosity is an amazing machine.

The drill dust is a different color. I assumed the rocks would be red inside.

I like that you used the Lincoln cent to calibrate the camera. Interesting that the VDB initials are barley visible at the lower left corner of the bust. Victor D Brenner (VDB) was the designer, now if it were the S (San Franciso) VDB it would be worth a pretty penny

Ken Edgett bought the special penny that's aboard Curiosity with funds from his own pocket. It is a 1909 "VDB" cent from the first year Lincoln pennies were minted, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, with the VDB initials of the coin's designer—Victor David Brenner—on the reverse. The penny is on the MAHLI calibration target as a tip of the hat to geologists's informal practice of placing a coin or other object of known scale in their photographs. "Everyone in the United States can recognize the penny and immediately know how big it is, and can compare that with the rover hardware and Mars materials in the same image," Edgett said. "The public can watch for changes in the penny over the long term on Mars. Will it change color? Will it corrode? Will it get pitted by windblown sand?" At right, the same penny, re-photographed on December 2, 2017, or Sol 1892, showing almost no visible wear, with only a small coating of dust. #

Sols = days, on Mars.

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[/CENTER]Early production coins had the designer's initials prominently displayed on the bottom of the reverse. The general public objected; so, the initials were reduced in size and moved to a less conspicuous place along the bottom edge of the obverse bust. The early ones had lower mintages and are worth more to collectors. They didn't make them with initials in both places.

I don't see the VDB on the calibration penny, does that mean my eyes are too old,or it's an early issue?

It's on the other side.

Only on the first coins then the initials were moved to under Lincoln's shoulder.