Annotated Version
This perspective view looking toward the northeast shows part of the
Columbia Hills range inside Gusev Crater. At the center is the winter
campaign site of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.
On its 805th Martian day, or sol, (April 8, 2006), Spirit was parked on a
slope tilting 11 degrees to the north to maximize sunlight on the solar
panels during the southern winter season. Science observations were
formulated to take advantage of the long time during which the rover was
parked. The plan focused on two tasks: tracking atmospheric and surface
dynamics by periodically surveying the surface and atmosphere; and
extensively examining surrounding terrains, rocks and soils using the
panoramic camera and the miniature thermal emission spectrometer, coupled
with long duration measurements using the alpha particle X-ray and
Moessbauer spectrometers of rock and soil targets. For reference, the
feature known as "Home Plate" is approximately 90 meters (295 feet) wide.
An image from Mars Global Surveyor's Mars Orbital Camera, catalogued as
E03_00012 and courtesy Malin Space Science Systems, was used as the base
image for this figure. The perspective was generated using elevation data
generated from analyses of the camera's stereo images by the U.S.
Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Ariz.
