Until now, images from the surface of Mars, while always breathtaking, have never come with the sense of immediacy of actually being there: The shots were either too obviously the result of technical processing - e.g., black-and-white shots, fish-eye effects, various unnatural color filters or contrast manipulations, etc. - or else too much like professional portraiture with everything all nice, neat, and vivid. But in the past few days it has all come home: The images I present below are so natural, mundane, and contextual that one can't help realizing on a visceral level that they are from a real place, and they look as if a human being were staring at them through a window or an unpolarized faceplate. I now know at the base of my spine, and not just in my mind, that we are going there.
Stare at the first one for a while: That's not some exhibit in front of a set-piece background, that's a piece of human technology on another planet - exactly as it would look if you were standing next to it fixing it with the tan-gray Martian sky in the background:
![mars-curiosity-rover-mastcam-1600](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8029/7977709286_327a6b803b_z.jpg)
![mars-rover-curiosity-wheels-mount-sharp](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8178/7977708978_b4aa30c7dc_z.jpg)
![mars-rover-curiosity-arm-sealed](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8305/7977707315_d2f5e9bff7_z.jpg)
![mars-rover-curiosity-belly-check](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8301/7977707275_3d4981a2f6_z.jpg)
![mars-rover-curiosity-arm-calibration](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8322/7977707515_9c6f641e02_z.jpg)