Last week NASA released a stunning panoramic view of the Martian surface taken by the Martian rover Opportunity. This single panoramic image is made up of 817 component images that were captured over a period of 6 months from December 2011 to May 2012.
The image shows Mars Opportunity’s solar arrays in the foreground as the rover looks over a segment of Endeavour crater – an impact crater stretching 22km in diameter and 300m in depth. In the distance lay the tracks of Mars rover Opportunity that can be seen running back over the horizon. This crater is billions of years old and was untouched until recently – now we are able to see with incredible detail (click the image below), just how the Martian landscape would look if we were standing on the surface.
Image Credit: NASA
This panorama can be explored in even more detail with this interactive 3D panoramic view from Opportunity.
Nick is the webmaster of planets.org.uk and regularly contributes to the news section on the site. Nick had a passion for astronomy at a young age and after completing a degree in Economics at the University of Leicester, he decided to dedicate a website to the planets.