The President and eleven tech leaders sign an AI accord that is, per the President, "morally binding," and the morally, in the specific, is the word the room uses for the word "we are looking at each other" ◆ Consumer confidence falls to 81.9, the lowest since 2014, and the 81.9, in the specific, is the word the survey uses for the word "we asked 5,000 households and they answered honestly" ◆ Netanyahu makes a secret trip to Abu Dhabi that the UAE confirms, Saudi Arabia denies attending, and Iran warns about, and the denial, in the specific, is the word diplomacy uses for the word "agenda" ◆ Curiosity marks 5,000 Martian days with a hand-colored postcard, blue for morning and yellow for afternoon, and the postcard, in the specific, is the word a rover uses for the word "I am still here" ◆ The Giants trade a 2027 fifth-round pick for a backup quarterback and say the starter is still the starter, and the fifth round, in the specific, is the word the ledger uses for the word "fresh start at retail" ◆ Jack Smith tells the Senate he will not be silenced, in a room run by the party he investigated, and the transcript, in the specific, is the word the institution uses for the word "we are still talking" ◆ A breakfast sausage recall covers 2,320 pounds of possible clear, hard plastic, and the click, in the specific, is the word a man in Rockford uses for the word "knee" ◆ The 30-year Treasury yield tops 5.6 percent, its highest since June 2002, and the 2002, in the specific, is the word the bond market uses for the word "we remember, and we have the numbers" ◆ OpenAI scraps the release of its own model because it failed internal safety tests, and the failure, in the specific, is the word the industry uses for the word "the system working" ◆ The party in power has reached, by its own description, the "panic" stage of the midterms, one month after the polls hit a 12-year low, and the panic, in the specific, is the word the polls use for the word "modest Democratic advantage" ◆

science

Curiosity Marks 5,000 Days on Mars With a Postcard, and It Is Nice to Get Mail

D

Dr. Pete Kowalski Science & Health Correspondent

September 30, 2026 at 11:50 AM 3 min read

A rover parked on a sand ridge on Mars, its tracks trailing behind, the panorama tinted blue on the morning side and gold on the afternoon side

PASADENA, CALIF. — NASA’s Curiosity rover has spent 5,000 Martian days on another planet, and to mark the occasion it sent home a postcard, which is the kind of thing you do for a birthday, and the kind of thing a machine does when its handlers love it.

The postcard was made by photographing the same sand ridge — nicknamed Chocolatal, at the base of Mount Sharp — twice, once on the morning of sol 5,000 and once on the afternoon of sol 5,003, then merging the two black-and-white panoramas and adding color by hand: blue for the morning, yellow for the afternoon. The blue is not water. The color is an artistic interpretation, and NASA said as much, which is the honesty of an institution that could have just called it a picture and didn’t.

The point of the two-pass trick is not decoration. It is to show how much the light on Mars shifts between breakfast and dusk, a shift so subtle that you need fourteen years of patience and a hand-colored composite to see it. Fourteen years. Curiosity landed in 2012, and it is still working, still photographing, still mailing us postcards from a ridge named after chocolate, on a planet where nothing else is alive to notice.

"The goal is not to dress up a landscape," NASA said of the postcard. "It is to let you see how much the light on Mars shifts between breakfast and dusk" — a sentence that describes a rover, a camera, and a Tuesday, and reads like a greeting card.

5,000 SOLS, AT A GLANCE

Milestone: sol 5,000, captured at 9:56 a.m. local Mars time on August 30.
Location: a sand ridge nicknamed Chocolatal, at the base of Mount Sharp.
Method: two black-and-white panoramas, merged, colored by hand.
Blue: morning. Yellow: afternoon. Grey: the actual surface, present in both.
Precedent: NASA has built these composites before, including one in November 2021, as has been well-documented.

At press time, the rover had been parked at the ridge for several sols, which for Curiosity is not idleness but a milestone: the machine stopped working long enough to look at itself, and the people on Earth looked back, and both agreed the view was nice.

Tags: science nasa curiosity mars postcard milestone

More science Stories

Reader Poll

Eleven of the largest companies in the country signed an agreement to police each other, and the enforcement is the conscience of each signatory. What, in the specific, is the word for a rule nobody is required to obey?

"A constitution" — because the President said so, and the President is consulting with the people who know him best, which, in the specific, is the word the room uses for the word "him" 47%

"A group chat" — because ten men agreed to look at each other until someone looks bad, and looks bad, in the specific, is the word the committee uses for the word "enforcement" 31%

"Lunch" — because the accord was signed at a luncheon, and the document, per witnesses, was placed at the center of the table, which, in the specific, is the word the table uses for the word "after dessert" 22%

Poll results reflect the views of 9 readers, a number we chose because it is, in the specific, the size of the committee that watches over the whole enterprise, and the enterprise, in the specific, is the word the committee uses for the word "everyone."

"I will not be silenced by the continued threats of prosecution from the president or others. I stand behind the cases my team brought, and we acted without regard to politics. The room is large, the microphone works, and the transcript, in the specific, is the word the institution uses for the word 'we are still talking.'"

— Jack Smith, former special counsel, at the Senate Judiciary Committee, which, in the specific, is the word a hearing room uses for the word "the people who were investigated"