NASA's Curiosity rover captures 360-degree view of Mars — and finds strange sulfur stones

A partial panoramic view of a rusty landscape with large broken rocks embedded in the redbrown ground.

For twelve years, we've watched Curiosity crawl its way over the rocky surface of Mars, decoding mysteries of the Red Planet and broadcasting back home pictures and data from the strange Martian environment.

The Mars rover, built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has slowly scaled Mount Sharp since 2014. This mountain, officially monikered "Aeolis Mons," was discovered in the 1970s; cut into its alien landscape is the boulder-packed Gediz Vallis channel, which some scientists believe to be an ancient river bed.