The robotic rover Curiosity has sent a spectacular selfie 225 million kilometres across space from the sun-burned rocks of Mars.

The self portrait was stitched together from a dozen photos taken with the robot’s own version of a selfie stick: a wide angle camera mounted on its arm.

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The bot seems to have serious selfie game, as this is not the first photo of itself it has taken.

“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,” NASA rover team member Kathryn Stack was quoted in US media.

Selfie stick not required. How I take self-portraits + why my arm isn’t in the shot http://t.co/emTsloKLYK pic.twitter.com/Cd5GOrohqK

— Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) February 24, 2015

Allegations of Photoshopping have already emerged, with NASA scientists admitting that they edited out the robot’s arm.

“The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, that were used in this mosaic,” NASA said in a statement.

The machine is currently drilling for rock samples on the red planet.