Last month, NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover captured a 360-degree panorama of its surroundings in the Vera Rubin Ridge on Mars.
What you'll see: NASA explains, "The panorama includes umber skies, darkened by a fading global dust storm. It also includes a rare view by the Mast Camera of the rover itself, revealing a thin layer of dust on Curiosity's deck. In the foreground is the rover's most recent drill target, named "Stoer" after a town in Scotland near where important discoveries about early life on Earth were made in lakebed sediments." According to Curiosity's project scientist, Ashwin Vasavada, "[t]he rover has never encountered a place with so much variation in color and texture."
The NHC is projecting that Hurricane Florence will be a Category 4 storm with 145 mph sustained winds 5 days from now.
Why it matters: That’s the strongest five-day intensity forecast for an Atlantic hurricane they’ve issued in the past two decades. Keep in mind though, intensity forecasts are much more uncertain than track forecasts.
Due largely to an unusual weather pattern across the North Atlantic, Tropical Storm Florence is increasingly likely to threaten the East Coast of the U.S. sometime next week, possibly as a major hurricane of Category 3 intensity or greater.
Why this matters: Computer model guidance for Florence have been volatile, exhibiting what forecasters call the "windshield wiper effect" of oscillating back and forth from run to run. However, they've now narrowed somewhat, agreeing that the storm will either pass close to or move into the East Coast next week — a potentially damaging scenario.
