Ron Wayman/NASA
Computer programmer Karl Sanford has made an awesome timelapse (embedded below) covering the first 281 sols (Martian days) of the Curiosity rover's exploration of the red planet, a time spanning from August 8, 2012, to last Tuesday.
Watching the video, you get an idea of why, by the end of January, the rover had barely traveled a half a mile. It spends a lot of time examining certain spots, and it only covers small distances even on the days when it's on the go (the rover's maximum speed is 0.056 miles per hour).
The only thing the video lacks is a soundtrack, so we've added one here, a remix of a track from Beasts of the Southern Wild. Just click play on both at about the same time and you'll be good to go. When you've got a few seconds left of music at the end, take a look at that picture of Mars above, as seen from Earth with an 8" telescope, and think about our little rover up there, hard at work day in and day out.
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