Every piece of news related to the Mars rover has been utterly fantastic. If you can’t get enough of it, you can now explore the red planet to your heart’s content with an interactive, zoomable panorama Curiosity has snapped at the landing site.
About 20km away from Curiosity, you can make out the peaks of Mount Sharp. The folks from the Jet Propulsion Lab give some context:
The images were obtained by the rover’s 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 29,000 pixels across by 7,000 pixels high, includes 130 images taken on Aug. 8 and an additional 10 images taken on Aug. 19. These images were shot before the camera was fully characterised. Scientists enhanced the colour in one version to show the Martian scene as it would appear under the lighting conditions we have on Earth, which helps in analysing the terrain.
Curiosity took off on her first drive last week. We can hope that brings some more awesome photos. [Gigapan via Alex Goldmark]
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS