NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera to
take the images combined into this full-circle view of the rover's
surroundings just after driving 104 meters (341 feet) on the 1,770th
Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's surface mission (January 15, 2009).
Tracks from the drive extend northward across dark-toned sand ripples and
light-toned patches of exposed bedrock in the Meridiani Planum region of
Mars. For scale, the distance between the parallel wheel tracks is about 1
meter (about 40 inches).
Prior to the Sol 1770 drive, Opportunity had driven less than a meter
since Sol 1713 (November 17, 2008), while it used the tools on its robotic
arm first to examine a meteorite called "Santorini" during weeks of
restricted communication while the sun was nearly in line between Mars and
Earth, then to examine bedrock and soil targets near Santorini.
The rover's position after the Sol 1770 drive was about 1.1 kilometer
(two-thirds of a mile) south southwest of Victoria Crater. Cumulative
odometry was 13.72 kilometers (8.53 miles) since landing in January 2004,
including 1.94 kilometers (1.21 miles) since climbing out of Victoria
Crater on the west side of the crater on Sol 1634 (August 28, 2008).
This view is presented as a cylindrical projection with geometric seam
correction.