(CNN) NASA's Curiosity rover sits on Mars with a view that no human has ever beheld in person.

But the cameras that act as its eyes capture the planet's desolate, craggy, red-washed vistas, and relay these scenes back to Earth in a stream of images each day.

But Curiosity's photography skills aren't just a window into another world -- the images, curated by a diligent, little-known team of scientists, deliver crucial information that informs future science.

The rover is larger than you might think---about seven feet tall and the size of a small SUV. If you study the face closely, you'll notice its mismatched eyes.

Both are fixed focal lengths with no zoom capability, in focus starting from about six feet ahead of the rover. The left eye is a 34 mm lens, while the right is a 100 mm telephoto.

The Mastcam , comprised of these two lenses, can capture color images and video, which can be stitched together for Curiosity's iconic selfies and panoramas. In early March, NASA shared a stunning panorama comprised of 1.8 billion pixels' worth of images taken over the Thanksgiving holiday.

It's like a large version of Disney's WALL-E, an endearing explorer sending back postcards to humanity on a daily basis.

The data, carried by radio waves, pings off orbiters around Mars and reaches NASA's Deep Space Network of antennas around the world.

Image processing specialists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are the first people in the world who get access to the photos.

They quickly process them, using the first digital image processing software actually developed by JPL in 1966.

Photoshop doesn't know how to handle the images sent back from Mars -- the photo editing software used by photographers would stitch images together and create a jumbled picture of Mars, completely out of order.

But image processing specialists like Hallie Gengl know exactly what to do.

Each image comes embedded with 100 lines of data, which Gengl and others on her team use to figure out its orientation in the larger mosaic they're assembling. Like individual paint pigments in a portrait, the images are quickly assembled, sent around to the rover team scientists and placed online for the public to view, including raw images , she said.

The images don't receive much editing. The main concern is making sure they're oriented the right way, especially when fitting them together in mosaics.

Without the images collected by Mastcam ---- as well as the black-and-white Navcams for navigation beneath them ---- the rover would sit still on Mars.

This is because Curiosity isn't autonomous. Instead, teams on Earth send commands to the rover. And without images, the drivers wouldn't be able to tell Curiosity where to go. Curiosity doesn't move unless it's safe to proceed.

to travel more than 13 miles across the surface of Mars since landing in 2012. Currently, it's It's those images that has enabled itto travel more than 13 miles across the surface of Mars since landing in 2012. Currently, it's climbing and investigating a steep hill to learn more about its geologic formation. When Curiosity landed, that same hill was just a blip in the distance.

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater, a vast and dry ancient lake bed with a 16,404-foot mountain at its center. Mount Sharp's peak is taller than the rim of the crater. Streams and lakes likely filled Gale Crater billions of years ago, which is why NASA landed the rover there in 2012.

The image processing team is an unseen element to the rover, but "you can't live without us," Gengl said. "We're getting data and we're sharing it with the world.

"Every day, I feel like I'm vicariously living through robots on Mars. Especially for rovers, because we're exploring a new location we've never been to. Seeing the images coming down, I can't help but think, 'I'm one of the first people to see this data of this location on Mars.' "

Photos: The best moments on Mars Photos: The best moments on Mars This artist's illustration shows the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter as it orbits Mars. The orbiter detected a layer of glowing green oxygen in Mars' atmosphere. Hide Caption 1 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars NASA's Curiosity Mars rover took a selfie shortly before completing its steepest climb yet on Mars up the Greenheugh Pediment, which tilted the rover 31 degrees. Hide Caption 2 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars NASA's Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama, including more than a thousand images and 1.8 billion pixels, of the Martian surface between November 24 and December 1, 2019. Hide Caption 3 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars The cloud in the center of the image is actually a dust tower that occurred in 2010 and was captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The blue and white clouds are water vapor. Hide Caption 4 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars This perspective of Mars' Valles Marineris hemisphere from July 9, 2013, is actually a mosaic comprising 102 Viking Orbiter images. At the center is the Valles Marineris canyon system, over 2,000 kilometers long and up to 8 kilometers deep. Hide Caption 5 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars NASA's Curiosity rover took this selfie on October 11, 2019, in the "Glen Etive" region. Hide Caption 6 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars The InSight lander was imaged from above by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Hide Caption 7 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Is that cookies and cream on Mars? No, it's just polar dunes dusted with ice and sand. Hide Caption 8 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars The European Space Agency's Mars Express mission captured this image of the Korolev crater, more than 50 miles across and filled with water ice, near the north pole. Hide Caption 9 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars A recent photo taken by the Curiosity rover shows its current location, known as "Teal Ridge." The rover has been studying the clay-bearing unit in this region. Hide Caption 10 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Cooled lava helped preserve a footprint of where dunes once moved across a southeastern region on Mars. But it also looks like the "Star Trek" symbol. Hide Caption 11 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars NASA's InSight lander used a camera on its robotic arm to capture this sunset on Mars on April 25. Hide Caption 12 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars InSight's seismometer recorded a "marsquake" for the first time on April 6, 2019. Hide Caption 13 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars A photo of a preserved river channel on Mars, taken by an orbiting satellite, with color overlaid to show different elevations. Blue is low and yellow is high. Hide Caption 14 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars This is NASA InSight's first selfie on Mars. It displays the lander's solar panels and deck. On top of the deck are its science instruments, weather sensor booms and UHF antenna. Hide Caption 15 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Rovers can take selfies, too. This self-portrait of the Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the Quela drilling location in the Murray Buttes area on lower Mount Sharp. Hide Caption 16 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Mars is far from a flat, barren landscape. Nili Patera is a region on Mars in which dunes and ripples are moving rapidly. HiRISE, onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, continues to monitor this area every couple of months to see changes over seasonal and annual time scales. Hide Caption 17 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars What are blueberries doing on Mars? These small, mineral hematite-rich concretions are near Fram Crater, visited by NASA's Opportunity rover in April 2004. The area shown is 1.2 inches across. The view comes from the microscopic imager on Opportunity's robotic arm, with color information added from the rover's panoramic camera. These minerals suggests that Mars had a watery past. Hide Caption 18 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Mars is known to have planet-encircling dust storms. These 2001 images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor orbiter show a dramatic change in the planet's appearance when haze raised by dust-storm activity in the south became globally distributed. Hide Caption 19 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Curiosity took images on September 9, 2015, of Mount Sharp, a hematite-rich ridge, a plain full of clay minerals to create a composite and rounded buttes high in sulfate minerals. The changing mineralogy in these layers of Mount Sharp suggests a changing environment in early Mars, though all involve exposure to water billions of years ago. Hide Caption 20 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars HiRISE captured layered deposits and a bright ice cap at the Martian north pole. Hide Caption 21 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars This image, combining data from two instruments aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, depicts an orbital view of the north polar region of Mars. The ice-rich polar cap is 621 miles across, and the dark bands in are deep troughs. To the right of center, a large canyon, Chasma Boreale, almost bisects the ice cap. Chasma Boreale is about the length of the United States' famous Grand Canyon and up to 1.2 miles deep. Hide Caption 22 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Although Mars isn't geologically active like Earth, surface features have been heavily shaped by wind. Wind-carved features such as these, called yardangs, are common on the Red Planet. On the sand, the wind forms ripples and small dunes. In Mars' thin atmosphere, light is not scattered much, so the shadows cast by the yardangs are sharp and dark. Hide Caption 23 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars From its perch high on a ridge, Opportunity recorded this image of a Martian dust devil twisting through the valley below. The view looks back at the rover's tracks leading up the north-facing slope of Knudsen Ridge, which forms part of the southern edge of Marathon Valley. Hide Caption 24 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars HiRISE took this image of a kilometer-size crater in the southern hemisphere of Mars in June 2014. The crater shows frost on all its south-facing slopes in late winter as Mars is heading into spring. Hide Caption 25 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used its HiRISE camera to obtain this view of an area with unusual texture on the southern floor of Gale Crater. Hide Caption 26 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars A dramatic, fresh impact crater dominates this image taken by the HiRISE camera on November 19, 2013. The crater spans approximately 100 feet and is surrounded by a large, rayed blast zone. Because the terrain where the crater formed is dusty, the fresh crater appears blue in the enhanced color of the image, due to removal of the reddish dust in that area. Hide Caption 27 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars Opportunity used its panoramic camera to record this eastward horizon view on October 31, 2010. A portion of Endeavour Crater's eastern rim, nearly 19 miles in the distance, is visible over the Meridiani Planum. Hide Caption 28 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars In this artist's concept of NASA's InSight lander on Mars, layers of the planet's subsurface can be seen below and dust devils can be seen in the background. Hide Caption 29 of 30 Photos: The best moments on Mars The two largest quakes detected by NASA's InSight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called Cerberus Fossae. Scientists previously spotted signs of tectonic activity here, including landslides. This image was taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter. Hide Caption 30 of 30

Seven years of Mars vistas

Every day for the last seven years, the rover team's scientists have begun their day by waking up to the latest images Curiosity snapped of Mars and analyzing the images for exciting features.

Curiosity's broad science team includes 500 scientists around the world, 40% of which are outside the US. They help make decisions for the science gathered by the rover's ten instruments.

But everything starts with what they see. Each day, depending on the bandwidth of what the rover can capture and send back, they're usually looking at a panorama consisting of a few dozen images.

Then the team of roughly 30 scientists get on a conference call. They talk about areas relating to their particular areas of focus, like geologists wanting to investigate unusual-looking rocks that appear in the images.

When the rover arrives at a new site, it's commanded to capture as much of the area in detail as possible.

"That data set provides our first look at what's really there," said Ashwin Vasavada, the rover's project lead scientist.

Vasavada said it's not unusual to wake up to emails full of exclamation points from a geologist who noticed an interesting crack in a rock -- and was awake at 3 a.m. to watch the image come down to Earth.

"Everyone has different things they're excited about," he said.

The rover takes new images every day, extends its robotic arm to investigate and place instruments strategically every few days and brings out its drill to sample material every few months, Vasavada said.

Every decision is a question of the science that could be returned, by the bandwidth and power used by the rover.

For example, the decision to keep the rover occupied over the Thanksgiving holiday made sense because the rover teams would be on break. Commands sent to the rover told it to sit still and focus on capturing images at the same time each day, which would provide even lighting for a wide panorama of its perspective.

The rover rarely has idle time when it's not investigating specific things, so the timing worked out. And it happened during the winter season on Mars, when there's less dust in the atmosphere. Vasavada said it was clearer on Mars during Thanksgiving than it was in Los Angeles.

After seven years -- and 16 total spent on the mission from concept to landing for Vasavada -- the rover teams are still excited to see what they learn each day.

They've checked off a lot of images and investigations on the wishlist.

But Vasavada and his colleagues want to investigate a transition in the rocks -- from those rich in clay to others more rich in sulfate minerals.

"It may indicate a big climatic change in early Mars, when there was a lot less water around and the rocks became more salty," he said. "This is one aspect of the landing site we've been talking about for years. I'm excited to see it. That's one thing I want to see before the mission ends."

And lessons learned from Curiosity's one megapixel cameras, as well as the stationary InSight lander and previous rovers like Spirit and Opportunity, have informed future missions. The Perseverance rover, which will sport 20-megapixel color zoom-capable cameras, is set to launch in July.

Curiosity requires between 10 and 12 images for a 360-degree panorama. Perseverance will only require five.

With rovers and landers on Mars, and orbiters above, it's safe to say we'll be waking up to new images from the surface of another planet for a long, long time.