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Timelapse: Curiosity's first year on Mars

Here is a rover's-eye view of driving, scooping and drilling during Curiosity's first year on Mars.

This post was originally published on Mashable.

Believe it or not, NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has been on the Red Planet for almost a full year now, first making contact on August 6, 2012. Since then, we've seen jaw-dropping full-colour panoramas of our closest galactic neighbour, a captivating Martian moonrise, a LEGO Curiosity rover and much, much more thanks to the expedition.

To celebrate a full year of successful space exploration, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has released a YouTube time-lapse video that compresses the entire mission to date into just two minutes, giving us a delightfully varied (if unfortunately black-and-white) look at the Martian landscape from a rover's-eye view.

The video consists of 548 images shot by the Curiosity's front "Hazard-Avoidance Camera", which helps keep it intact while navigating tough terrain. We see, among other activities, the rover scooping up its first samples of Martian soil as well as drilling into a Martian rock to collect another sample.

It will be fascinating to see what Curiosity digs up, both figuratively and literally, during its second year. But that will likely be nothing compared to the Mars mission NASA has planned for 2020.

Mashable is the largest independent news source covering digital culture, social media and technology.