A photograph of a human standing on Mars is still decades away. But the idea that a human-built rover might take a self-portrait on the red planet came sometime in 2011. A few members of the team directing the cameras on the Curiosity Rover had gathered at the home of filmmaker James Cameron, who suggested that perhaps a selfie on Mars could be truly Earth-changing. “The idea was that people could see the craft at work and engage with it in a new way,” says Michael Ravine, a photographing engineer with Malin Space Science Systems, the company that developed and operates the cameras on Curiosity.

The rover is equipped with some of the best cameras in the universe (as far as