Mars rover Curiosity takes selfie during brutal dust storm

There is a pretty cool photo being shared online of NASA's Curiosity rover sitting in the middle of a huge dust storm on Mars. And it may leave you wondering, how did they take that photo? Well, the rover took the The photo, you just can't see it selfie stick. The magic is in stitching multiple photos together. The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory posted a video a few years ago that explains all the different ways the rover can take photos. There are 17 cameras on the curiosity, but it's all done with just one Camera on a robotic arm that's two meters long. Now as you can see in this animation, the Rover first takes photos of itself, then the camera spins around 180 degrees to take photos of the ground around it. All the while the arm is be Highly camera. Then the series of photos are stitched together so you don't see the arm at all in any shot. It's sort of like what happens when you use your phone to take a panoramic shot. It stitches multiple shots together. This selfie in the June storm was touched up by digital artists Sean Doran. And posted to Flicker. Curiosity is looked pretty good considering this is a nasty storm. It covers about a quarter of the planet. Curiosity is able to keep going even if the storm covers up the sun, thanks to a nuclear-power battery. And that's not the case for the other Mars rover, Opportunity. That rover had to suspend operations because it depends on solar power. The dust around it is blotting out the sun. So they can't charge up. Opportunity has been active on Mars for 15 years and NASA's hopeful that it will survive the storm, just like it survived the last big storm in 2007. For CNet, I'm Bridget Kerry