The Curiosity rover shows off a new selfie on Mars

Curiosity is currently studying a site named “Mary Anning,” celebrating the 19th century paleontologist.

The camera at the end of Curiosity’s “selfie stick” is actually used for science most of the time.

It’s called the Mars Hand Lens Imager (or MAHLI) and Curiosity uses it to take up close pictures of sand grains and rock textures.

To take the selfie, Curiosity simply turns MAHLI towards itself and takes multiple images from many points of view.

Then image processors at NASA combine these images, remove the robotic arm, and voila, you have a selfie.

NASA's newest Mars rover, Perseverance, will land on Mars in February 2021. And because it's built similarly to Curiosity, presumably it will also be able to take selfies.