NASA's Curiosity rover takes new low-angle 'selfie on Mars'

New Delhi: Taking the selfie craze to a whole new space, NASA’s Curiosity Rover has captured a self-portrait on the surface of Mars.

The robot used its inbuilt selfie stick to capture the 360 degree low-angle self-portrait of itself sitting in the Marias Pass region of Mars.

Curiosity Rover has been investigating the chemical make-up of Mars and is currently analysing samples in its internal laboratories.

It initially noted the area was high in silica and hydrogen on May 21 while climbing to a site and turned round to have a closer look. After drilling into the rock it used the camera on its robotic arm to capture multiple images which were stitched together into a self-portrait at the drilling site.

The selfie combines several component images taken by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on August 5, during the 1,065th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars.

MAHLI is mounted at the end of the rover's robotic arm. For this self-portrait, the rover team positioned the camera lower in relation to the rover body than for any previous full self-portrait of Curiosity. This yielded a view that includes the rover's 'belly,' as in a partial self-portrait.