Nasa unveiled a breathtaking colour snapshot yesterday of the surface of Mars shot by its Spirit rover using a camera with the robotic equivalent of 20/20 vision.
The new colour image is the sharpest photograph ever taken on the surface of Mars. Nasa scientists called the picture a "postcard" sent across 105 million miles of space to Earth from its Spirit rover.
The image is actually a mosaic of 12 separate pictures shot by Spirit's high-resolution panoramic camera, or Pancam. It covers a 45-degree field of view of the terrain in Gusev Crater, where Spirit landed on Saturday.
"Trenching into this stuff will be an absolute blast," Steven Squyres, the mission's main scientist, said while describing the image of smooth and angular rocks and soil near the rover landing site.
The image is a taste of bigger and better pictures to come. The postcard makes up just one-eighth of a sweeping colour panorama Spirit continues to shoot. It should be transmitted to Earth over the next week.
After a flawless landing, the rover has snapped images of a barren, rock-strewn landscape scientists hope will yield clues to whether Mars was once hospitable to life.
Nasa on Monday released a 3-D, black-and-white picture that provided a 360-degree look at the desolate, wind-swept plains of the surface of Mars.
"I feel like I'm at a bad, '50s B-movie," mission manager Matt Wallace quipped after reporters were issued 3-D glasses to take in the image at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
Guided by the high-resolution image, Nasa scientists selected the first target on Mars they want Spirit to explore: a dusty depression nicknamed "Sleepy Hollow" that lies about 40 feet from where the rover landed. They believe the 30-ft-wide diameter depression is a dust-filled impact crater, one of dozens that pock an otherwise flat landscape.
"It's a window" to Mars's ancient past, said Dr Squyres.
The golf cart-size Spirit alighted on Mars in what scientists believe was a near-perfect landing with giant airbags as cushions.
The $450 million unmanned project also includes a twin rover, Opportunity, set to land on the opposite side of Mars on January 24th.
Scientists found that two objects believed to be rocks partially blocking the ramp Spirit will use to roll down to the surface are actually bits of air bag. Nasa planned to retract the air bags to clear the way. - (AP)