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How far away are those hills in the back? I'm guessing they're farther away than we might think, due to Mars not having much of an atmosphere to reduce visibility.

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I believe that's the crater rim, and the crater is 96 miles in diameter, with the landing site closer to the edge than the center.

I think you think its a lot farther than it actually is.

My estimate would be about a mile.

From a topographic picture of Gale crater [1] with the landing area of Curiosity circled, its about 25km to the nearest crater wall or slightly more than 15 miles to the crater wall.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Topograp...

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