NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover has snapped a huge selfie - or is it selfies - as it paused from its drilling duties.

The selfie shows a broad vista of the terrain of the Pahrump Hills where Curiosity's been drilling for the past five months to learn more about the Martian environment.

Like Us on Facebook

The selfie isn't a single photo, however. NASA stitched dozens of photos taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera attached to Curiosity's robotic arm.

"Compared with the earlier Curiosity selfies, we added extra frames for this one so we could see the rover in the context of the full Pahrump Hills campaign," said Kathryn Stack, rover team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"From the Mojave site, we could include every stop we've made during the campaign."

A version of the photo released by NASA pinpoints the different spots where Curiosity has been drilling and conducting research. The rover is helping NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project assess the habitable environments and major changes in the atmosphere of Red Planet.

NASA said Curiosity's next stop will be a site called Telegraph Peak. Here, Curiosity will drill for another sample that can be analyzed and shed new insight on how Mars' environment has changed.

The nuclear powered explorer was launched in November 2011 and arrived on Mars in August 2012.