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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 1451: Gorgeous view!
The images for panorama obtained by the rover's 34-millimeter Mast Camera. The mosaic, which stretches about 30,000 pixels width, includes 146 images taken on Sol 1451 (September 4, 2016).
Curiosity had a nice ~78 m drive on Sol 1448, which set us up for a lot of great science over the long (4-sol) weekend. Unfortunately a problem with the Deep Space Network caused an entire Odyssey pass to be lost, so we didn’t receive the workspace images that we would have needed to do contact science. Without those images we didn’t feel safe moving the arm. But the team did a great job putting together a full weekend plan. The first sol starts with several Navcam observations to search for dust devils and monitor the atmosphere. Then we’ll acquire a Mastcam mosaic to document the beautiful buttes that we’ve been driving through, followed by ChemCam observations of the targets "Benguela" and "Gabela" to assess the composition of the local bedrock. Later in the afternoon we’ll take two more Mastcam mosaics of the buttes under better lighting conditions. Overnight, Curiosity will carry out a SAM methane experiment. On the second sol we’ll take a 360-degree Mastcam mosaic to document the geology as we drive through the Murray Buttes. On the third sol we’ll drive, followed by standard post-drive imaging for targeting and context. After a busy weekend, the fourth sol is devoted entirely to REMS observations. While the buttes are beautiful, they pose a challenge to communications, because they are partially occluding communications between the rover and the satellites we use to relay data (MRO and ODY), so sometimes the data volume that we can relay is pretty low. But it’s a small price to pay for the great stratigraphic exposures and gorgeous view!
Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
By Lauren Edgar
Research Geologist at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center
...
The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".
