2N142535885EFF7000P0670R0M1 Spirit Sol 182 2004.7.16 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell; Photomosaic and colorization by Eric Hartwell

Sprit's Navigation Camera observed its shadow and tracks at approximately 16:29:26 Mars local solar time on Sol 182. Artificial colors added.

PIA07371 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers used their panoramic cameras to take the images combined to make these mosaic views of the two overs.

The downward-looking views omit the masts on which the cameras are mounted. They show moderate dust accumulation on Spirit's solar panels, while Opportunity's solar panels are relatively dust-free.

The images were taken through the cameras' 600-, 530- and 480-nanometer filters.

Spirit took its portrait (PIA07371) during its 329th and 330th martian days, or sols (Dec. 7 and 8, 2004). Opportunity took its portrait (PIA07372) during its 322nd and 323rd martian days, or sols (Dec. 19 and 20, 2004).

PIA04183 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

This "postcard" or mini-panorama was taken by NASA's Spirit rover on martian day, or sol, 582 (August 23, 2005), just as the rover finally completed its intrepid climb up Husband Hill. The summit appears to be a windswept plateau of scattered rocks, little sand dunes and small exposures of outcrop. The breathtaking view here is toward the north, looking down into the drifts and outcrops of the "Tennessee Valley," a region that Spirit was not able to visit during its climb to the top of the hill.

The approximate true-color postcard spans about 90 degrees and consists of images obtained by the rover's panoramic camera during 18 individual pointings. At each pointing, the rover used three of its panoramic filters (600, 530 and 480 nanometers).

1P146558782EFF35B8P2560L2M1 Opportunity, 11:22:07 Local Solar - PanCam Sol 207 2004.8.24 Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell. False color photo illustration by Eric Hartwell

As NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity creeps farther into "Endurance Crater," the dune field on the crater floor appears even more dramatic. This false-color image taken by the rover's panoramic camera shows that the dune crests have accumulated more dust than the flanks of the dunes and the flat surfaces between them. Also evident is a "blue" tint on the flat surfaces as compared to the dune flanks. This results from the presence of the hematite-containing spherules ("blueberries") that accumulate on the flat surfaces.

Sinuous tendrils of sand less than 1 meter high extend from the main dune field toward the rover. Scientists hope to send the rover down to one of these tendrils in an effort to learn more about the characteristics of the dunes. Dunes are a common feature across the surface of Mars, and knowledge gleaned from investigating the Endurance dunes close-up may apply to similar dunes elsewhere.

Before the rover heads down to the dunes, rover drivers must first establish whether the slippery slope that leads to them is firm enough to ensure a successful drive back out of the crater. Otherwise, such hazards might make the dune field a true sand trap.

1P178705723EFF5927P2357L2M1 Opportunity Sol 569 2005.8.30 Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell; Photomosaic and false color photo illustration by Eric Hartwell

After freeing itself from 'Purgatory Dune', Opportunity continued its way across the Meridiani dunes on its trek south toward Erebus Crater.

The rover planners were careful to keep Opportunity safely within the confines of the ripple troughs and determine where the rover could safely cross from one ripple trough into another. The rover team kept Opportunity inside the ripple troughs, and followed the troughs south towards the "Erebus highway", an area the team expected to be easier to navigate. This region was also highly populated with outcrop and cobbles for analysis.

Photo-illustration with creative colors by Eric Hartwell.

PIA07334 Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit took this full-circle panorama of the region near "Husband Hill" (the peak just to the left of center) over the Thanksgiving holiday, before ascending farther. Both the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are still going strong, more than a year after landing on Mars.

This 360-degree view combines 243 images taken by Spirit's panoramic camera over several martian days, or sols, from sol 318 (Nov. 24, 2004) to sol 325 (Dec. 2, 2004). It is an approximately true-color rendering generated from images taken through the camera's 750-, 530-, and 480-nanometer filters. The view is presented here in a cylindrical projection with geometric seam correction.

Spirit is now driving up the slope of Husband Hill along a path about one-quarter of the way from the left side of this mosaic.

PIA03275 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

This bird's-eye view combines a self-portrait of the spacecraft deck and a panoramic mosaic of the Martian surface as viewed by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. The rover's solar panels are still gleaming in the sunlight, having acquired only a thin veneer of dust two years after the rover landed and commenced exploring the red planet. Spirit captured this 360-degree panorama on the summit of "Husband Hill" inside Mars' Gusev Crater. During the period from Spirit's Martian days, or sols, 583 to 586 (Aug. 24 to 27, 2005), the rover's panoramic camera acquired the hundreds of individual frames for this largest panorama ever photographed by Spirit or Opportunity.

The panoramic camera shot 653 separate images in 6 different filters, encompassing the rover's deck and the full 360 degrees of surface rocks and soils visible to the camera from this position. This is the first time the camera has been used to image the entire rover deck and visible surface from the same position. Stitching together of all the images took significant effort because of the large changes in resolution and parallax across the scene.

This image is an approximately true-color rendering using the camera's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 480-nanometer filters for the Martian surface, and the 600-nanometer, 530-nanometer, and 480-nanometer filters for the rover deck. This polar projection is a compromise between a cylindrical projection (PIA03610), which provides the best view of the terrain, and a vertical projection, which provides the best view of the deck but distorts the terrain far from the rover. The view is presented with geometric seam correction. Image-to-image seams have been eliminated from the sky portion of the mosaic to better simulate the vista a person standing on Mars would see.

After investigating the summit area, Spirit drove downhill to get to the Inner Basin region. The summit region itself is a broad, windswept plateau. Spirit spent more than a month exploring the summit region, measuring the chemistry and mineralogy of soils and rocky outcrops at the peak of Husband Hill for comparison with similar measurements obtained during the ascent.

PIA07922 Opportunity sol 446 2005.4.26 Credit: NASA/JPL

While motoring across the Meridiani plain on its 446th sol, Opportunity ground to a halt as it dug itself into what came to be called 'Purgatory Dune'. The elongated dune, or ripple, is about one-third of a meter tall and 2.5 meters wide. The colors in this vertical projection show the relative elevations - red areas are about 70 centimeters higher than the green. "All six wheels were just about completely buried," said MER Principal Investigator Steve Squyres. Freeing the rover took more than five weeks of planning, testing, and carefully monitored driving. The drivers finally decided the best exit strategy was, as Squyres described it, to "put it in reverse and gun it."

This mosaic of navigation-camera frames from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, presented in a vertical projection, shows the rover's position after it dug itself to wheel-hub depth in a small dune during its 446th martian day, or sol (April 26, 2005). The colors are coding for information about relative elevations in the surrounding area. Red areas are the highest in the image, green areas the lowest.

Opportunity had completed nearly 40 meters of a planned 90-meter drive that sol when its wheels began slipping. The rover was driving backwards at the time. The rover team frequently alternates between backwards and forwards driving to keep wheel lubrication well distributed. The wheels kept rotating enough times to have covered the rest of the distance if they hadn't been slipping, but the rover eventually barely inched forward. After a turn at the end of the planned drive, Opportunity sensed that it had not turned properly and stopped moving. The rover team spent more than a week designing and conducting tests under simulated Mars conditions on Earth before choosing the best way for Opportunity to drive out of the dune.

PIA03241 Opportunity sol 298-294 2004.11.13 Credit: NASA/JPL-Solar System Visualization Team

Burns Cliff is an exposure of bedrock and ejecta on the southern rim of Endurance Crater. The meteorite impact broke up the bedrock, creating the ejecta blocks at the top of the wall. The blocks were then weathered by sand, wind and water, suggesting that the Meridiani area was covered by a shallow sea or lake that went through wet and dry episodes. This is an approximate true color image, with a virtual Opportunity rover superimposed to scale, based on the size of the rover tracks.

This synthetic image of NASA's Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover inside Endurance Crater was produced using "Virtual Presence in Space" technology. Developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., this technology combines visualization and image processing tools with Hollywood-style special effects. The image was created using a photorealistic model of the rover and an approximately full-color mosaic. The size of the rover in the image is approximately correct and was based on the size of the rover tracks in the mosaic.

Because this synthesis provides viewers with a sense of their own "virtual presence" (as if they were there themselves), such views can be useful to mission teams by enhancing perspective and a sense of scale.

Opportunity captured the underlying view of "Burns Cliff" after driving right to the base of this southeastern portion of the inner wall of "Endurance Crater." The view combines frames taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera between the rover's 287th and 294th martian days (Nov. 13 to 20, 2004).

This is a composite of 46 different images, each acquired in seven different Pancam filters. It is an approximately true-color rendering generated from the panoramic camera's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer filters. The mosaic spans more than 180 degrees side to side. Because of this wide-angle view, the cliff walls appear to bulge out toward the camera. In reality the walls form a gently curving, continuous surface. See PIA07110.

PIA03231 Sprit sol 454 2005.4.13 Credit: NASA/JPL-Solar System Visualization Team

This view from Husband Hill features Clark Hill (to the left), the Meridiani plains, and the far side of Gusev Crater. A scale model of the rover was added to Sprit's actual false-color image.

This synthetic image was produced using "Virtual Presence in Space" technology. Developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., this technology combines visualization and image-processing tools with Hollywood-style special effects. The image was created using a photorealistic model of the rover and a false-color mosaic.

The size of the rover in the image is approximately correct and was based on the size of the rover tracks in the mosaic. The mosaic was assembled from frames taken by the panoramic camera on the rover's 454th Martian day, or sol (April 13, 2005); see PIA07855).

This is the martian rover that keeps going and going and going. Opportunity continued to roll on, performing panoramic camera soil surveys and imaging the lay of the land as it crossed the rippled flatland heading southward toward craters called "Viking" and "Voyager."

On sol 408, Opportunity broke the martian one-day driving record, traveling an impressive 190 meters in a single sol. However, this record did not stand very long. The rover surpassed it on sol 410 (March 20, 2005) and set the new record of 220 meters.

Photo-illustration with creative colors by Eric Hartwell.

ASU-IPF-2454 Opportunity sol 134 2004.6.09 Credit: NASA/JPL-Cornell, Rover Model: D. Maas , Synthetic Image: Z. Gorjian, K. Kuramura, M. Stetson, E. De Jong

This photo-realistic, but false color, image shows what a Mars Exploration Rover would look like on Mars. The background image shows the dark soil, ancient rock and small spherules ("blueberries") inside Endurance Crater.

The hematite (iron oxide, or rust) blueberries aren’t really blue – they’re actually grey – nor are they the size of blueberries – they're only around 3 millimeters in diameter.

The 2 meter high Opportunity rover is superimposed at the correct scale. Dan Maas created the excruciatingly-detailed digital model of the Mars rovers based on blueprints from NASA/JPL, including virtually everything on the real rovers down to every last nut, bolt, and wire.

PIA07997 Spirit sol 489 2005.5.19 Credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell

Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater some 80 km away. Spirit was commanded to stay awake briefly after sending that sol's data to the Mars Odyssey orbiter just before sunset. Because Mars is farther from the Sun than the Earth is, the Sun appears only about two-thirds the size that it appears in a sunset seen from the Earth. The colors are as close as possible to what a human would see.

On May 19th, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera (Pancam) mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover's 489th martian day, or sol. Spirit was commanded to stay awake briefly after sending that sol's data to the Mars Odyssey orbiter just before sunset. This small panorama of the western sky was obtained using Pancam's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer color filters. This filter combination allows false color images to be generated that are similar to what a human would see, but with the colors slightly exaggerated. In this image, the bluish glow in the sky above the Sun would be visible to us if we were there, but an artifact of the Pancam's infrared imaging capabilities is that with this filter combination the redness of the sky farther from the sunset is exaggerated compared to the daytime colors of the martian sky. Because Mars is farther from the Sun than the Earth is, the Sun appears only about two-thirds the size that it appears in a sunset seen from the Earth. The terrain in the foreground is the rock outcrop "Jibsheet", a feature that Spirit has been investigating for several weeks (rover tracks are dimly visible leading up to "Jibsheet"). The floor of Gusev crater is visible in the distance, and the Sun is setting behind the wall of Gusev some 80 km (50 miles) in the distance.

This mosaic is yet another example from MER of a beautiful, sublime martian scene that also captures some important scientific information. Specifically, sunset and twilight images are occasionally acquired by the science team to determine how high into the atmosphere the martian dust extends, and to look for dust or ice clouds. Other images have shown that the twilight glow remains visible, but increasingly fainter, for up to two hours before sunrise or after sunset. The long martian twilight (compared to Earth's) is caused by sunlight scattered around to the night side of the planet by abundant high altitude dust. Similar long twilights or extra-colorful sunrises and sunsets sometimes occur on Earth when tiny dust grains that are erupted from powerful volcanoes scatter light high in the atmosphere.