Mars image ‘next best thing to being there’ – NASA

It’s the next best thing to being on Mars – that’s seeing a panoramic view of new tracks and an old impact crater on the Red Planet. Over a period of 4 months, the panoramic camera Pancam mounted on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity took a total of 817 images. The panoramic scene that fuses together all the images shows a “spectacularly detailed view of the largest impact crater that we’ve driven to yet with Rover over the course of the mission,” Pancam lead scientist Jim Bell of Arizona State University, Tempe said. July 2 marked Rover Opportunity’s 3,000^th Martian day, while the US space agency marked its 15^th year of robotic presence on the Red Planet.

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