New images captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) reveal a very unusual sight: an orbital view of the trackway left in the Martian sand by one of the planet’s robotic explorers.
The photographs are believed to mark the first known imagery documenting the transit of the intrepid Curiosity rover by one of NASA’s Mars orbiters.
The images were obtained in late February as Curiosity trekked along toward its next scientific investigation using the orbiter’s HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera.
In the new images, initially released on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) website earlier this week, Curiosity can be seen as a tiny dot near the bottom of the frame, trailed by a long and winding set of tracks marking its pathway through a basin.
Curiosity Caught In-Transit
The pathway revealed in the MRO images represents 11 separate drives, which the rover completed between February 2 and February 28, 2025.
Moving at a speed of just 0.1 miles per hour, at the time the photos were obtained, the rover was en route between the Gediz Vallis channel and an area described by the Curiosity team as “a region with potential boxwork formations, possibly made by groundwater billions of years ago.”
Although Curiosity can move more quickly at times, the rover’s ground speeds are often determined by the difficulty of the terrain it is attempting to climb and how well its onboard software can navigate.
The Curiosity team at JPL meticulously plans each movement executed by the rover. Curiosity’s planning team chief Doug Ellison said that the tracks revealed in the recent MRO image indicate a 69-foot drive, completed in just under a month of travel.
A ‘HiRISE’ View of a Martian Rover
The MRO’s HiRISE camera primarily conducts its reconnaissance in black-and-white imagery, with only a portion of each image revealed in color. In the past, Curiosity has been spotted in the color ranges of the orbiter’s imagery, but only while the rover was parked at one of its destinations.
As the new images indicate, Curiosity’s trackway leads to the base of what the JPL team identifies as a steep sloping area, which the rover has since ascended.
In around another month, Curiosity is expected to make its way to its next destination, where it will continue its explorations of the Red Planet’s surface features and search for evidence of ancient water on the barren planet, as well as possible signs of life.
Additional information about Curiosity’s mission and ongoing studies of the Martian landscape can be found on its official page on NASA’s website, while additional details on the MRO’s operations and imagery it obtains can be found here.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work at micahhanks.com and on X: @MicahHanks.