This 180-degree panorama shows the southward vista from the location where
Spirit is spending its third Martian winter inside Mars' Gusev Crater. The
rover's overwintering location is on the northern edge of a low plateau
informally called "Home Plate," which is about 80 meters or 260 feet in
diameter.
This view combines 168 different exposures taken with Spirit's panoramic
Camera (Pancam)—42 pointings with 4 filters at each pointing. Spirit
took the first of these frames during the mission's 1,477th Martian day,
or sol, (February 28, 2008) two weeks after the rover made its last move
to reach the location where it would stop driving for the winter. Solar
energy at Gusev Crater is so limited during the Martian winter that Spirit
does not generate enough electricity to drive, nor even enough to take
many images per day. The last frame for this mosaic was taken on Sol 1599
(July 2, 2008). The rover team plans for Spirit to finish taking images
for the northern half of the scene during the Martian spring.
The northwestern edge of Home Plate is visible in the right foreground.
The blockier, more sharply shadowed texture there is layered sandstone
whose layering is tilted inward toward the edge of the Home Plate
platform. A dark rock on top of Home Plate in that area is a porous
volcanic basalt unlike rocks nearby. The northeastern edge of Home Plate
is visible in the left foreground. Spirit first climbed onto Home Plate on
that region, in early 2006.
Rover tracks from driving by Spirit are visible on Home plate in the
center and right of the image. These were made during Spirit's second
exploration on top of the plateau, which began when Spirit climbed onto
the southern edge of Home Plate in September, 2007.
In the center foreground, the turret of tools at the end of Spirit's
robotic arm appears in duplicate because the arm was repositioned between
the days when the images making up that part of the mosaic were taken.
On the horizon, the highest point is "McCool Hill." This is one of the
seven larger hills in the Columbia Hills range. Home Plate is in the inner
basin of the range, between McCool Hill to the south and "Husband Hill" to
the north. To the right of McCool Hill, in the center of the image and
closer to Home Plate, is a smaller hill capped with a light-toned outcrop.
This hill is called "Von Braun," and it is a possible destination the
rover team has discussed for the next season of driving by Spirit, after
the solar energy level increases in the Martian spring. The flat horizon
in the right-hand portion of the panorama is the basaltic plain onto which
Spirit landed on Jan. 4, 2004.
This is an approximate true-color, red-green-blue composite panorama
generated from images taken through the Pancam's 750-nanometer,
530-nanometer and 430-nanometer filters. This "natural color" view is the
rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if we were
there and able to see it with our own eyes.