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Bruce Murray Space Image Library

Spirit "Cahokia" Panorama, sols 213-223

Spirit "Cahokia" Panorama, sols 213-223
Spirit "Cahokia" Panorama, sols 213-223 This stunning image mosaic of the "Columbia Hills" includes rocks that show evidence of past alteration by water. The dark patch of soil to the right is the spot where Spirit stopped for engineering work on its right front wheel. Spirit's tracks can be followed from there all the way back to "Bonneville Crater" and the original landing site, more than 3 kilometers away. This approximate true-color image, nicknamed the "Cahokia panorama" after the Native American archaeological site near St. Louis, was acquired between sols 213 to 223 (9 to 19 Aug 2004). The panorama consists of 470 images acquired through six panoramic camera filters (750 to 480 nanometers). It took until the week of sol 237 (2 September) to downlink all the data back to Earth. Several more weeks of image processing and geometric mapping by team members at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., were required to stitch all the images together into this spectacular mosaic. Because the rover was parked on a steep slope, it was tilted approximately 22 degrees to the west-northwest. NASA / JPL-Caltech / Cornell