Watch: Curiosity's journey on Mars, in just two minutes

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Curiosity survives the dreaded “Seven Minutes of Terror” and lands successfully on Mars. Staffers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge (and people around the world) celebrate. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Curiosity plays space DJ -- beaming the Will.i.am song “Reach for the Stars” back to Earth. (Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times)

By Deborah Netburn

Aug. 5, 2013 6:46 PM PT

What’s it like to be the Curiosity Rover on Mars? Watch this video and you’ll find out.

The two-minute video, released by NASA to celebrate the anniversary of the rover’s first year on Mars, is composed of 548 images, all taken by the black-and-white fish-eye camera on the front of the rover.

The camera’s main job is “hazard avoidance,” but the images it captures do a good job of telling the story of the robot’s journey on the Red Planet so far.

Over the course of the video, you see the rover testing out its gadgetry, driving across the cracked and dusty surface, then taking its first scoops of Martian soil. (You’ll see the little bite marks in the dirt around 25 seconds in.)

It drills and samples, and drills and samples again. You can’t tell from the video, but the rover is finding evidence that billions of years ago, Mars would have made a comfortable home for microbial life.

Occasionally, off in the distance, you see Mt. Sharp looming over the landscape.

That is where the rover is headed next.

According to JPL, the rover has already sent more than 70,000 images back to Earth, covered about a mile of ground and fired more than 75,000 laser shots at 2,000 targets.

At Mt. Sharp, the rover will examine different strata of rock at the base of the 3-mile-high mountain.

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