Click on the image for Summit Panorama with Rover (QTVR)
The panoramic camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit took the
hundreds of images combined into this 360-degree view, the "Husband Hill
Summit" panorama. The images were acquired on Spirit's sols 583 to 586
(Aug. 24 to 27, 2005), shortly after the rover reached the crest of
"Husband Hill" inside Mars' Gusev Crater. This is the largest panorama
yet acquired from either 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.
The image is an approximately true-color rendering using the
750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 480-nanometer filters for the surface,
and the 600-nanometer and 480-nanometer filters for the rover deck.
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.
This panorama provided the team's first view of the "Inner Basin" region
(center of the image), including the enigmatic "Home Plate" feature seen
from orbital data. After investigating the summit area, Spirit drove
downhill to get to the Inner Basin region. Spirit arrived at the summit
from the west, along the direction of the rover tracks seen in the middle
right of the panorama. The peaks of "McCool Hill" and "Ramon Hill" can be
seen on the horizon near the center of the panorama. 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.
