NASA / JPL-Caltech / Marco Di Lorenzo / Ken Kremer

The Curiosity rover's instrument-laden robotic arm is front and center in this mosaic view captured by the Mars rover's NavCam system and assembled by Marco Di Lorenzo and Ken Kremer. The colorized black-and-white imagery was captured on March 23. Click on the image to see the full panorama.

After a week of down time due to a computer glitch, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover is once again sending back pictures of its rocky Red Planet locale at Yellowknife Bay. In this fresh panorama, the rover looks as if it's sticking its drill-equipped robotic arm right in your face.

"That drill is hungry, looking for something tasty to eat, and 'you' (loaded with water and organics) are it," jokes scientist-writer Ken Kremer, who collaborated with Italian colleague Marco Di Lorenzo to assemble the panorama.

Curiosity's percussive drill played a key role in the science team's most recently reported breakthrough: the finding that powder drilled out of a Martian rock contained the chemical traces of a life-friendly environment that existed on Mars billions of years ago. The team's chemical analysis of the powder indicated that the minerals were probably formed in the presence of drinkable water.

That kind of water no longer exists in liquid form on the Martian surface. The place where Curiosity is currently working may have once been in the vicinity of a riverbed, but it's now a cold and dry wasteland of sand and rock. In the weeks to come, Curiosity's scientists plan to drill into the rock again, looking for confirmatory clues about the potentially habitable environment in the Red Planet's past.

The plan has been held up due to a series of minor setbacks — including a memory failure that may have been due to a cosmic-ray strike, a precautionary stand-down to weather a solar storm, and most recently a computer file glitch that put the rover into safe mode. The Curiosity team has been carefully bringing the rover back to full operation, and this picture is presumably part of the checkout process.

It won't be long before the rover will once more have to reduce its contact with its handlers back on Earth, due to an Earth-Mars-sun conjunction that will interfere with radio signaling. Curiosity's communication gap is expected to last from April 4 to May 1, as detailed in a mission update from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the break, Curiosity is expected to carry on with its experiments, but the transmission of science data and images will have to wait until May. So let's enjoy these fresh images while we can.

For more of Curiosity's raw imagery, check out the galleries on JPL's Mars Science Laboratory website. You'll also find great pictures on UnmannedSpaceflight.com, where Kremer, Di Lorenzo and other image-processing gurus post their work. If you have 3-D glasses, whip 'em out and take a look at Ed Truthan's red-blue view of Curiosity's first drilling site.

Slideshow: Curiosity's space odyssey to Mars

Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars and see the pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.

Launch slideshow

More about Mars:

• How a Martian mountain would look on Earth
• What's next for the Curiosity rover
• NBC News archive on Mars

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and the rest of NBCNews.com's science and space coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp, also known as Aeolis Mons, in a white-balanced color adjustment that makes the sky look overly blue but shows the terrain as if under Earthlike lighting. This is just a small segment of a wider panorama assembled from image data collected on Sept. 20, 2012. The sky has been filled out by extrapolating color and brightness information from the portions of the sky that were captured in images of the terrain. A raw-color version of the mosaic shows the scene's colors as they would look in a typical smartphone camera photo taken on Mars. Click on the image to see a larger version from NASA.

If you could pull up a 3-mile-high mountain from Mars and plop it down in California's Mojave Desert, it'd probably look much like this latest color panorama from the Curiosity rover's science team. This little piece from the panorama doesn't do justice to the whole picture: You really should see the whole thing at high resolution to get a sense of just how much Mount Sharp, a.k.a. Aeolis Mons, looms over the scene where NASA's six-wheeled robotic lab has been working.

The most jarring thing about the picture is the blue sky. No, the Martian sky doesn't really look like that. The Red Planet's atmosphere is filled with iron-rich dust that turns everything into shades of butterscotch, burnt orange and brick. To see Mount Sharp as you or your smartphone camera might see it if you were actually there, check out this true-color version of the panorama.

The blue-sky version has been processed to reflect a white-balanced view, as if the picture were taken in an earthly rather than a Martian setting. Why would scientists bother with a phony view of Mars? "White-balancing helps scientists recognize rock materials based on their experience looking at rocks on Earth," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains in Friday's photo advisory. It's as if Curiosity was able to get rid of all that red dust in the air and take a clear picture of the mountainside from miles away.

The pictures for this panorama was taken in September, while the rover was en route to its first destination. For the past couple of months, Curiosity has been studying the rocks at a site known as Yellowknife Bay, and it's already turned up some amazing discoveries about Mars' past — including evidence that the area was capable of supporting microbial life billions of years ago.

Within the next couple of months, Curiosity is due to turn around and begin its 6-mile (10-kilometer) trek to the foothills of that big mountain. Pictures like this panorama will help scientists figure out exactly where their nuclear-powered robotic geologist should be going.

Slideshow: Curiosity's space odyssey to Mars

Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars and see the pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.

Launch slideshow

More about Mars:

• Martian rock reveals life-friendly conditions
• What's next for Mars Curiosity rover
• NBC News archive on Mars

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other science coverage, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

Members of the Crew 125 EuroMoonMars B mission return after collecting geological samples for study at the Mars Desert Research Station in the Utah desert on March 2. The mission is meant to simulate what explorers will face during an eventual mission to the Red Planet.

NASA says it could be another 20 years before humans touch down on Mars, but in a sense, the Mars Society has been exploring the red planet for more than a decade — in Utah.

The nonprofit society's Mars Desert Research Station, near Hanksville, Utah, has been home to 126 crews since the Mars-style habitat was erected in 2002. The idea behind the experimental station is to test the tools and techniques that could come into play during eventual human expeditions to the real Red Planet. Each expedition crew consists of roughly a half-dozen volunteers who spend about two weeks in the Utah desert, conducting real research on a make-believe Mars.

Utah's desert is one of several locales around the world that are thought to be sufficiently Mars-like to teach researchers about the far more extreme conditions on the cold, dry planet. Other locales for Mars simulations include the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica, Norway's Svalbard Peninsula, caves on the Italian island of Sardinia, and even a lab in Russia.

The crew members for such simulations range from NASA researchers to students who hope to walk on Martian soil someday. Another would-be Marsonaut is Reuters photographer Jim Urquhart, who has long yearned to take pictures of the Mars Desert Research Station and its crew. "I had tried for years to go, but my story pitches never made the cut," he said Monday in a blog posting. This month, Urquhart finally got the green light from his editors, in part because "science and space exploration have become sexy again," he said.

Urquhart came away impressed by the volunteer astronauts. "I kept thinking to myself that this group of six embodies so much of what I wish I could become," he said. "They were passionate and chasing their dreams."

Check out these pictures — and Urquhart's blog posting — for more about his visit to Mars in the Utah desert.

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

The night sky whirls above the Mars Desert Research Station outside Hanksville, Utah, in a long-exposure photo. The station is designed to reflect the type of habitat that would be constructed on the Red Planet for future explorers.

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

Csilla Orgel, a geologist, collects samples for study in the Utah desert.

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

Members venture out in their simulated spacesuits to collect samples.

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

Crew members return to the Mars Desert Research Station after a simulated Marswalk.

Jim Urquhart / Reuters

Crew members prepare a meal inside the Mars Desert Research Station. The mock astronauts wear simulation spacesuits when the venture outside, but work in shirt sleeves when they're inside the habitat.

Slideshow: Month in Space: February 2013

Get a look at the moon's glories, interplanetary vistas and other outer-space highlights from February 2013.

Launch slideshow

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

Scientists say that a "Martian flower," seen here in an image from the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager, is a 2-millimeter-wide grain or pebble that's embedded in the surrounding rock. Another, darker-colored mineral grain can be seen above and to the left.

The scientists behind NASA's $2.5 billion Curiosity rover mission on Mars on Tuesday explained the nature of a tiny, gleaming "flower" embedded in Red Planet rock, and revealed where they'll be using the SUV-sized robot's drill for the first time.

Both those developments point to the same happy discovery: The place where the rover is working was almost certainly formed through the action of water — and seems likely to provide new insights into the planet's geological history. "This is something that we've waited patiently for," Caltech geologist John Grotzinger, the mission's project scientist, told journalists during a NASA teleconference.

The "Martian flower" made a splash on the Internet, in part because it looked so different from the surrounding rock in a microscopic-scale picture from Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. Few people thought it was actually a flower, though it looked a bit like one. Was it a piece of plastic from the rover itself? An unusual type of mineral?

The Planetary Science Institute's R. Aileen Yingst, deputy principal investigator for the MAHLI team, delivered the expert verdict. It's a relatively large mineral grain, or "a pebble, if you wish," measuring about a tenth of an inch (2 millimeters) wide. "It could be a lot of things, but without some chemical information to back me up, I'd really hesitate to say what it is," she said.

She pointed out that a couple of similar, darker-colored grains could be seen embedded nearby. The important thing is what such rounded grains have to say about the scene's history. "They've been knocked around, they've been busted up. They've been rounded by some process," she said. That suggests that running water helped form the rock, which has been nicknamed Gillespie Lake.

Drill, rover, drill
Five months after its landing, the six-wheeled Curiosity rover is surrounded by plenty of additional evidence that water had a hand in shaping the landscape billions of years ago. That's why Grotzinger and his colleagues have decided to put the rover's heavy-duty drill to work for the first time on a flat spread of rock called "John Klein." The name pays tribute to John W. Klein, a former deputy project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory mission who died in 2011.

"John's leadership skill played a crucial role in making Curiosity a reality," Richard Cook, the mission's project manager, said in a news release.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This image of an outcrop at the "Sheepbed" locality, taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover with its right MastCam on Dec. 13, show well-defined veins filled with whitish minerals, interpreted as calcium sulfate. These veins form when water circulates through fractures, depositing minerals along the sides of the fracture, to form a vein. This is Curiosity's first close look at minerals that formed within water that percolated within a subsurface environment.

Cook told reporters that the first drilling operation would probably take place in the next two weeks, after additional rounds of engineering tests and scientific study.

"The scientists have been let into the candy store," he said.

One of the most interesting characteristics of the site is that it's shot through with light-toned veins of calcium-rich material. "On Earth, forming veins like these requires water circulating in fractures," said Nicolas Mangold of the Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique de Nantes in France. Mangold is a member of the team behind Curiosity's laser-equipped Chemistry and Camera instrument, or ChemCam.

'A whole different world'
Grotzinger marveled at how different the terrain is from the spot where Curiosity landed, even though both are within Mars' 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) Gale Crater. The rover's current base of operations, nestled in a shallow depression called Yellowknife Bay, has a type of bedrock that cools more slowly each night than the surrounding terrain. "We don't know what's causing the change," Grotzinger said.

"It's like we entered a whole different world," he said.

The drill at the end of Curiosity's 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm has not yet been used, but mission managers will command it to drill a series of holes going as deep as 2 inches (5 centimeters) into the rock. The first test holes will serve to clean off any leftover earthly contamination, Cook said. Grotzinger said the drill will eventually produce scientific samples to be fed into the rover's onboard chemical labs, known as CheMin and SAM.

"What we're hoping to do is sample both the vein-filling material as well as what we call the country rock around it," he said.

Before Curiosity's landing, NASA reported that small amounts of Teflon and other material from the drill might contaminate the rock samples. On Tuesday, Cook said the scientists "could work around" the contamination issue by accounting for the unwanted chemicals when they did their analysis.

Curiosity's two-year-long primary mission is aimed at determining whether Mars could have had the chemical building blocks required for life as we know it. Eventually, the 1-ton rover will make its way to a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain in Gale Crater, but Grotzinger said scientists wanted to take ample time to investigate the mysteries they're finding along the way.

More about Curiosity's mission:

• Family gets back down to Earth after living on Mars time
• Rover gives Martian rock its first brushoff
• Curiosity studies a 'flower' on Mars
• Cosmic Log archive on Curiosity

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Slideshow: Curiosity's space odyssey to Mars

Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars and see the pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.

Launch slideshow

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

A photographic mosaic shows the Curiosity rover's surroundings at a Martian location known as Yellowknife Bay. This view has been assembled from black-and-white images captured by the rover's navigation camera on Sol 132 (Dec. 19). Gaps in imagery of the Martian sky have been filled in, and the whole scene has been colorized. Click here or on the image to see the complete 360-degree panorama.

The cameras on NASA's Curiosity rover have been clicking away over the holidays — gathering enough pictures for a 360-degree panorama of its rocky surroundings at Yellowknife Bay, plus a close-up view showing a "Martian flower" seemingly sprouting from the surface.

The panorama was assembled from pictures snapped by the rover's navigation camera system on the 132nd Martian day of Curiosity's mission on the Red Planet, also known as Sol 132 or Dec. 19.

In this case, the folks doing the assembling are Ken Kremer, a New Jersey-based journalist, research chemist and photographer; and Marco Di Lorenzo, a physicist who's a high-school educator and photographer in Italy. They stitched together the black-and-white images, filled in the gaps in the Martian sky and colorized the scene to reflect what an observer on Mars might see.

We've featured the efforts of Kremer and Di Lorenzo several times before: They're part of an active online community that makes use of the raw images provided by Curiosity and other Mars probes, and then shares them via websites such as UnmannedSpaceflight.com. Even now, the folks at UnmannedSpaceflight are posting plenty of amazing pictures from Yellowknife Bay, including a must-see, zoomable GigaPan version. 

Another picture from Sol 132 has stirred up some buzz at the Above Top Secret discussion forum. The picture focuses in on a bright, crumpled object that's sitting on a Martian outcrop, as seen by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. The translucent shape is reminiscent of a flower's pistils, which led one of the forum's members to call it a "Martian flower."   

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

An anomalous bit of bright material can be seen left of center in this view captured by Curiosity's Mars Hand Lens Imager on Sol 132 of the mission (Dec. 19).

Update for 8:30 p.m. ET: I initially suspected that the flower was a tiny shred of plastic from the rover itself. Such a shred popped up in October. At that time, experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory surmised that the plastic may have been a bit of wrapping that was knocked loose from the Mars Science Laboratory's descent stage during the spacecraft's August landing. The plastic was thought to have fallen on top of the rover, and then dropped to the ground weeks later.

That's what led me to go with the plastic-scrap hypothesis. However, some of the folks commenting on the pictures noted that the object seemed to be embedded in the rock — which would argue against my hypothesis. So I put in an inquiry with Guy Webster, who serves as JPL's main spokesman for NASA's Mars missions.

A couple of hours later, Webster emailed me the verdict: "That appears to be part of the rock, not debris from the spacecraft."

Mystery solved? It's certainly an intriguing bit of mineral that stands out prominently in the MAHLI picture. If I find out anything more, I'll be sure to pass it along. And if it turns out that flowers are really sprouting up on Mars, you'll know it's time to cue up the "X-Files" theme. Either way, the truth is out there.  

More pictures from Kremer and Di Lorenzo:

• Scenes from Mars' 'Promised Land'
• Rover checks out its belly on Mars
• Curiosity adds color to Martian peak
• Mars rover points to its destination
• Still more from KenKremer.com

More about Martian anomalies:

• Opportunity's rover rotini
• Spirit's 'Mermaid on Mars'
• Opportunity's bunny ears
• Phoenix's Martian spring

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Slideshow: Curiosity's space odyssey to Mars

Trace the Curiosity rover's journey to Mars and see the pictures that the six-wheeled robot has sent back from the Red Planet.

Launch slideshow

NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI

NASA's Cassini orbiter captured this view of Saturn on June 15, from a distance of about 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers). The rings' shadow runs across the planet's sunlit side. The speck in the lower left corner is Enceladus, a 313-mile-wide (504-kilometer-wide) moon of Saturn.

NASA's Cassini sent back this big, beautiful, black-and-white picture of Saturn — but what's that little white speck in the corner?

The image, unveiled by Cassini's imaging team on Monday, shows tiny Enceladus at lower left. It's just 313 miles wide (504 kilometers wide), and yet it shines brightly from a distance of 2 million miles or so. Enceladus is arguably as intriguing as Saturn, and here's why: The icy moon has geysers of water spouting up from cracks in its surface, suggesting that there's a deep ocean and perhaps even some sort of life down below.

To get a more imaginative view of Enceladus, check out this posting on the io9 blog, featuring an illustration from "Planetfall: New Solar System Visions," a big, beautiful, full-color coffee-table book by Michael Benson. NPR's Robert Krulwich showed off the same image earlier this month on his Krulwich Wonders blog.

Enceladus is just one of the moons of the solar system that's been soaking up the spotlight lately: Also this month, NASA's Curiosity rover watched Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, pass over the sun's disk during a series of mini-eclipses. The rover won't see such a sight again for 11 months or so. Here's a smooth animation of Deimos' transit from Nahum Chazarra on UnmannedSpaceflight.com. And if you haven't seen it already, you'll want to catch up with the sight of a crescent Phobos in Mars' dusky sky. 

Shine on, Harvest Moon
Our own moon is definitely worth watching over the next few days: Saturday brings a "Harvest Moon" — that is, the full moon that's closest to the September equinox. That's traditionally a good moon to bring in the harvest by, since it lights up the whole night for late-working farmers.

The Harvest Moon also can serve as a guidepost for finding the planet Uranus in the night sky, although the moon's glare interferes with the view this weekend. If you'd like some extra help, the Slooh Space Camera is planning a couple of online viewing parties over the weekend — with Uranus as the guest of honor. Video feeds will be coming in to the Slooh website from a variety of observatories, and a panel of experts will provide commentary. The first show begins at 7 p.m. ET on Saturday, with an encore performance at 10.

Next week, the moon continues to act as a guide, as Sky & Telescope's Alan M. MacRobert explains. On Oct. 3, the moon lingers near the Pleiades star cluster. The next night, it sits near the bright red star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus. And on Oct. 5, the waning moon hangs out with Jupiter, starting around 10 p.m.

This weekend is also a good time to look for the International Space Station as well as the European Space Agency's Automated Transfer Vehicle, which undocked from the station today. To find out when and where to look, check out NASA's satellite sighting database.

Where in the Cosmos
Cassini's picture of Saturn and Enceladus served as today's "Where in the Cosmos" picture puzzle on the Cosmic Log Facebook page. It took just a few minutes for Ian Slota to solve the riddle and report that the speck in the picture was Enceladus. As a reward, I'm sending Ian a pair of big, beautiful, cardboard 3-D glasses, courtesy of Microsoft Research's WorldWide Telescope project. Those glasses will come in handy for seeing 3-D pictures of Saturn's moons. Click the "like" button for the Cosmic Log Facebook page, and you too may be a winner in next week's "Where in the Cosmos" game.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ circles. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

A mosaic of photos taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager on NASA's Curiosity rover shows the underside of the rover and its six wheels, with Martian terrain stretching back to the horizon. The four circular features on the front edge of the rover are the lenses for the left and right sets of Curiosity's hazard avoidance cameras, or Hazcams. Because of the different perspectives used for different images, some of the borders of the photos don't line up precisely.

More than a month after landing, NASA's Curiosity rover is finally ready for its close-ups, and they're coming in bunches: After taking its own profile picture, the six-wheeled robot has snapped a series of images that show its flat-as-a-board belly.

Today's flood of photographs comes courtesy of the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI, one of Curiosity's 17 cameras. The self-focusing, 1.5-inch-wide (4-centimeter-wide) camera is mounted on the end of Curiosity's robotic arm, and is designed to take up-close pictures of rocks and soil on Mars. It serves a purpose similar to that of a geologist's hand lens — hence its name.

MAHLI is undergoing a series of checkouts now that the 7-foot-long (2.1-meter-long) robotic arm has been limbered up. The rover is making its way to its first major destination: a geologically intriguing spot called Glenelg, which is about a quarter-mile (400 meters) from the spot in Gale Crater where Curiosity landed on Aug. 5.

The rover's $2.5 billion primary mission is aimed at determining whether Mars ever had the chemical constituents to support life. Glenelg will serve as a good warmup for the centerpiece of Curiosity's two-year trek: a climb up the slopes of a 3-mile-high mountain called Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp.

So far, all of Curiosity's instruments appear to be in great shape — with the exception of a wind-speed sensor that was apparently taken out of commission by a hail of pebbles kicked up during the rover's descent. Curiosity's handlers had worried that the pebbles might have damaged the MAHLI camera as well. Fortunately, the pictures taken over the past few days prove that MAHLI (pronounced like "Molly") is in great shape.

This mosaic of Curiosity's trim underside was put together by Ken Kremer, a New Jersey-based journalist, research chemist and photographer; and Marco Di Lorenzo, a physicist who is a high school educator and photographer in Italy. Kremer and Di Lorenzo are among the habitues of UnmannedSpaceflight.com, where image-processing gurus are having a field day with the MAHLI pictures. NASA's website for the Curiosity mission is also mad about MAHLI today. Check out these MAHLI masterpieces, plus a bonus panorama from Ken Kremer and a video from NBC Nightly News:

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This picture shows just how much detail the MAHLI camera can pick up. It shows a one-cent coin and a few of the symbols printed on a calibration target mounted on Curiosity. The image was acquired from a distance of 2 inches (5 centimeters). The coin is a 1909 penny provided by MAHLI principal investigator Ken Edgett. "Everyone in the United States can recognize the penny and immediately know how big it is, and can compare that with the rover hardware and Mars materials in the same image," Edgett explained. "The public can watch for changes in the penny over the long term on Mars. Will it change color? Will it corrode? Will it get pitted by windblown sand?" Flecks of reddish Martian sand can already be seen on and around the penny. One of the images printed above the penny is a cartoon character called "Joe the Martian."

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

This image, captured by Curiosity's MAHLI camera over the weekend, shows a patch of ground measuring about 34 inches (86 centimeters) across. The size of the largest pebble, near the bottom of the image, is about 3 inches (8 centimeters).

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

A combination of images from the MAHLI camera provides a close look at the Curiosity rover's wheels, right down to the dirt stuck in the treads.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo produced this "colorized" version of a panorama looking back at the Curiosity rover's tracks on Sol 24 of its mission (Aug. 30). The panorama is based on black-and-white imagery from Curiosity's Navcam system. Missing patches of the Martian sky have been filled in. The lower reaches of Mount Sharp can be seen at the picture's left edge, and the rise of Gale Crater's rim stretches across the rest of the horizon.

Update for 9:05 p.m. ET: Kremer points out that the pictures of Curiosity's underbelly are far sharper than similar underbelly images that were captured by the Spirit rover in 2009, when mission managers worried that it was hung up on a rock. He said the difference illustrates the "quantum leap" in capability between the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which were launched in 2003, and the Curiosity rover, which was sent toward Mars last year.

More vistas from Mars:

• Curiosity snaps its own profile picture
• Mars rover's tracks traced from orbit
• Curiosity looks back at its first tracks
• Rover's first moves at Bradbury Landing
• Martian peak picks up some extra color
• Curiosity rover points to its target peak
• Cosmic Log archive for the Mars mission

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

This mosaic was assembled from pictures taken by the Curiosity rover's navigation camera over several days (in black and white) as well as its Mastcam 34 camera (in color, with contrast enhanced to bring out detail). Gaps in the Martian sky have been filled based on the shading in existing imagery.

Over the past few days, we've been tracking the assembly of a giant jigsaw puzzle from Mars, delivered piece by piece by NASA's Curiosity rover. Today, image-processing wizards are adding more of the key pieces to fill out the picture of the 3-mile-high mountain that the car-sized rover is facing.

Newly available full-color pieces of the puzzle show the mountain, known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp, as seen by Curiosity's Mastcam imaging system. Previous versions of the Martian panorama have been in black and white, or "colorized." What we're seeing now are Mount Sharp's true colors, tinged in the red dust of Mars.

In the image above, Ken Kremer, a New Jersey-based journalist, Ph.D research chemist and photographer, fits the color imagery inside a bigger black-and-white jigsaw puzzle that's been provided by the rover's navigation camera system. (We featured the Navcam panorama a couple of days ago, and a couple of puzzle pieces have been added since then.) The color contrast has been bumped up to bring out more of the detail on the mountaintop.

If you were to see the scene with the rover's eyes, the shades of color would be much more muted, due to the lighting conditions and the presence of dust in the Martian air. In the image below, British educator-astronomer Stuart Atkinson's presentation of the puzzle pieces closer to the "true" colors. 

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Stuart Atkinson

This true-color view shows the Mastcam view of Mount Sharp's peak in color. The colors are more muted than they would be on Earth, due to lighting conditions.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Stuart Atkinson

An enhanced-color version of stitched-together Mastcam imagery provides a closer look at the mesas and buttes on the flanks of Mount Sharp.

These images provide just a taste of the view captured by the Curiosity: Each of the frames that make up the Mastcam mosaic measures 1,200 by 1,200 pixels, and as you can see in this sample frame, each full-size puzzle piece shows rock layering that you can't possibly make out in the larger overall puzzle pictures. The geologists and planetary scientists who are working on the $2.5 billion Curiosity mission will be poring over pictures like this for months to come, in order to plot the six-wheeled rover's route up the mountainside.

Eventually, Curiosity will be snapping full-color pictures at much closer range, and perhaps even capturing video of its exploits at 5 frames per second. But even now, the Mastcam views are giving Mars fans plenty to ooh and ahh over — whether they're members of the Curiosity team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or watchful wizards of image processing from across the globe.

To get in on the wizardry, click on over to UnmannedSpaceflight.com, where folks such as Kremer and Atkinson regularly hang out. (Some of the forum's habitues already have filled in even more pieces of the puzzle.) For more about what Kremer's up to, check out KenKremer.com or the Adirondack Public Observatory's website. And to check in with Atkinson's activities, click on over to The Gale Gazette or The Road to Endeavour.

More visuals from Mars:

• 3-D adds depth to tracks on Mars
• Watch the rover fall to Mars ... in HD!
• Mars rover takes its first drive at Bradbury Landing
• Where's Curiosity going? Rover's arm points the way
• Watch the Curiosity rover wiggle its wheels

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

The Mars Curiosity rover's robotic arm takes aim at Mount Sharp in a mosaic that combines navigation-camera imagery from Sols 2, 12 and 14 (Aug. 8, 18 and 20). The shadow of the rover's camera mast is visible in the center foreground, but a significant portion of the mosaic still has to be filled in.

If you want to know where NASA's Curiosity rover is heading, all you have to do is look where its robotic arm is pointing in this picture. The Martian mosaic was pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle by Ken Kremer and Marco Di Lorenzo, using black-and-white pictures from the rover's navigation camera system.

The robotic arm was raised into what looks like a pointing position as part of this week's checkout for Curiosity's $2.5 billion mission. When fully extended, the arm can stretch out for 7 feet (2.1 meters). About 66 pounds' (30 kilograms') worth of scientific instruments, including a camera and an X-ray spectrometer, are mounted on the end of the arm.

The arm is pointing at a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain known as Aeolis Mons or Mount Sharp — a mound inside Mars' Gale Crater whose layers of rock could reveal a geological record going back billions of years. During its two-year mission, Curiosity is expected to make the 12-mile (20-kilometer) trek to the mountain's flanks for one of the most sophisticated scientific investigations ever conducted on Mars.

But first things first: After testing the robotic arm, Curiosity is ready to roll its wheels on Mars for the first time, more than two weeks after its high-stakes landing. For more about that, check out today's report from mission managers as well as the Curiosity files on NBCNews.com.

Bonus round: Here's another view of the rover and Mount Sharp, pieced together by Kremer and Di Lorenzo from an assortment of navigation camera imagery and "colorized" to reflect Mars' reddish tones:

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Ken Kremer / Marco Di Lorenzo

A colorized view of the Curiosity rover's surroundings draws upon navigation camera imagery, with the Martian sky filled in.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log and NBCNews.com's other science and space stories, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Doug Ellison

This view of the Curiosity rover's surroundings on Mars was assembled from black-and-white photos sent back by the navigation camera on Sol 2 and Sol 12 of the mission. Doug Ellison of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory filled out the Martian sky artificially, using the lighting values from the pictures that were acquired.

NASA's Curiosity rover has sent back its sharpest image of the 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain it will climb on Mars.

The mountain, known as Mount Sharp or Aeolis Mons, towers right in front of the rover in the middle of 96-mile-wide Gale Crater, where Curiosity landed two weeks ago. The shadow of the rover's mast is visible in the picture, which incorporates fresh imagery from the six-wheeled robot's navigation camera system. The high country of the crater's rim rises to the left and the right of the mountain.

Black-and-white frames showing Mount Sharp's summit in all its glory were received overnight. Doug Ellison, a visualization producer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, added the mountain vista to a 360-degree panorama of the rover's surroundings, and filled in the rest of the sky based on the lighting data he had at hand.

The earlier Navcam panorama showed the crater's towering rim, but did not take in the upper reaches of the mountainside. A separate color panorama, provided by the rover's Mastcam system, is being filled out but does not yet include pictures of Mount Sharp's peak.

The main objective of Curiosity's two-year, $2.5 billion primary mission is to make its way to Mount Sharp and document billions of years of the Red Planet's geological history by analyzing the different layers of rock along the mountainside. Studying the geology and chemistry of Mount Sharp's various strata could tell scientists how habitable the planet was in earlier epochs, and how Mars has changed since then.

Project scientist John Grotzinger said on Friday that Curiosity would study its relatively nearby surroundings during the first few months of the mission, then start out in earnest for Mount Sharp by the end of the calendar year. It may take one Earth year for Curiosity to get to the foot of the mountain, and the trek to the higher elevations may well require extending the mission beyond its primary phase.

Grotzinger and his colleagues are hoping that extension will happen: The primary missions for Curiosity's older, smaller siblings — NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers — were set to last 90 days, but both of those solar-powered rovers lasted years longer. Opportunity is still at work, more than eight and a half years after its landing on Mars. The 1-ton, car-sized Curiosity is a much more capable rover, and it has a nuclear power source that could continue to generate electricity for decades.

Mount Sharp is the name commonly used by the Curiosity team, to honor the late Caltech geologist Robert Sharp, but the mountain's formal name is Aeolis Mons, according to the International Astronomical Union. For extra perspective on the mountain, check out this 3-D view produced by Ellison, as well as a newly released picture of Mount Sharp's central mound, taken from above by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The viewing angle for the orbital image is 45 degrees from the side, as if it were being seen from an airplane window.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Doug Ellison

Doug Ellison of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory assembled this stereo view of the Curiosity rover's surroundings on Mars using imagery from two of the imagers that are part of the rover's navigation camera system. Red-blue glasses are required to get the stereo effect.

NASA / JPL-Caltech / Univ. of Ariz.

A long strip of imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the central mound of Mount Sharp, as well as the sand dunes surrounding the mountain. The colors have been stretched to emphasize differences in surface composition. (That means the sand dunes are not really blue.) Although this image was acquired after the Curiosity's landing, the viewing angle is such that none of the spacecraft's hardware is visible in this image.

More about Mars:

• Laser-equipped rover gets ready to zap a rock
• Britney Spears to Mars rover: What's new?
• Rover reveals more of Martian peak
• Mars rover team faces the masses
• Mars fans make viral video
• Panoramas add spin to Mars
• Mars rover survives its 'brain transplant'
• Mars orbiter gets a long look at Curiosity rover
• Reprogrammed rover getting ready to roll
• Obama tells rover team: Watch out for Martians
• Search for life to shape future Mars missions
• Mars rover getting reprogrammed for science
• Why the rover has such a dinky camera and computer
• How to build your own Mars rover with Lego blocks
• The Puff on Mars: Photo mystery solved!
• Panorama reveals a colorful Mars
• NBC video: Panorama featured on 'Nightly News'
• Curiosity reveals a Martian Mojave
• Tour the Martian Mojave in 3-D
• Flying saucer spotted over Mars
• First 3-D pictures sent by Curiosity
• Orbital photo spots rover and its trash
• Curiosity sends color snapshot from Mars
• Rover video looks down on Mars during landing
• Mars orbiter spots rover in midair
• NASA's Mohawk Guy marvels at his fame
• Curiosity rover scores touchdown on Mars