To take these latest, highly detailed images, NASA's Curiosity Mars rover, which landed on the Red Planet just over a month ago, relied on its most homely instrument: the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI.
The 4-centimetre-wide camera was designed to play the role of a geologist's hand lens, a coin-sized magnifying glass typically worn on a lanyard around the neck.
In the field, geologists use them to get close-up views of the size and texture of the grains that make up rocks, letting them distinguish between cemented sands and solidified soils.
MAHLI's powerful lens leaves all human aids in the dust. The 2-megapixel colour camera can resolve features down to 12.5 micrometres wide.
The microscopic imager on the last Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, could only see down to a few hundred micrometres.
"
MAHLI's resolution was designed to resolve down to the size of a grain of talcum powder," said
Aileen Yingst of the
Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, in a press conference last week.
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