NASA releases spectacular Mars panorama

Reuters

Reuters photo

NASA released a full-circle scene that combines 817 images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover "Opportunity" on the planet Mars. 

The picture shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter. 

Opportunity's Pancam took the component images between the 2,811th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's Mars surface mission (Dec. 21, 2011) and Sol 2,947 (May 8, 2012). 

Opportunity spent those months on a northward sloped outcrop, "Greeley Haven," which angled the rover's solar panels toward the sun low in the northern sky during southern hemisphere winter. The outcrop's informal name is a tribute to Ronald Greeley (1939-2011), who was a member of the mission team and who taught generations of planetary scientists at Arizona State University, Tempe. The site is near the northern tip of the "Cape York" segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater.