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System Check
Image courtesy Caltech/NASA
NASA's Curiosity rover snapped this closeup view of its tool turret flexing its seven-foot-long (two-meter-long) robot arm on August 20—the first time since landing on the red planet about two weeks ago.
The car-size robotic geochemist conducted a series of health checks on itself, including unfolding its arm and making sure all five of its joints are in working order.
Like a hand, at the tip of its appendage is a 2-foot-wide (0.6-meter-wide), 70-pound (32-kilogram) turret of five tools that will be used to collect and analyze rock and soil samples on Mars.
(Get the full story of Curiosity's mission in the National Geographic e-book Mars Landing 2012.)
—Andrew Fazekas
Published August 22, 2012
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"Stunning Sky Show"
Photograph by Jeffrey Berkes, Your Shot
A Perseid meteor streaks over New Jersey's East Point Lighthouse in a picture submitted August 16 to National Geographic's Your Shot community.
Photographer Jeffrey Berkes waited most of the night to catch a glimpse of the Perseids.
"As dawn approached, a stunning sky show revealed itself," he said with his submission.
Published August 22, 2012
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Impact Crater?
Image courtesy U. Arizona/NASA
While NASA's rover prepares to learn about Martian history from ground level, orbiting satellites are studying the planet's landscape from hundreds of miles above.
Taken in 2011 by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and released this week, the above image showcases a newfound dark spot with what looks like a rayed blast zone.
The fact that the dark spot did not exist in images taken two years earlier suggests it's a telltale sign of a fresh impact crater, scientists say.
Published August 22, 2012
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Volcanic Debris
Image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS/NASA
A brown ribbon of pumice from an undersea volcano floats on the surface near the Kermadec Islands, northeast of New Zealand, in an August 13 satellite picture.
NASA's Terra satellite captured the progress of the pumice raft, which emerged July 28 and gradually dispersed over an area of at least 280 miles (450 kilometers).
Published August 22, 2012
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Stellar Line Up
Photograph by Alex Cherney, TWAN
A stone chapel under a myriad of stars and the brightest planets highlight this view from Lake Tekapo Starlight Reserve on New Zealand's South Island.
The two brilliant starlike objects, planets Jupiter (far left) and Venus, shine like beacons next to the famed Orion, the hunter constellation in one of the most unpolluted skies found on the globe.
In 2009 UNESCO designated Lake Tekapo as the world's first internationally recognized dark-sky conservation park.
Published August 22, 2012
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