Pasadena (California), Jan 06: The US robot probe Spirit has snapped the first full-colour images of its surroundings on Mars, pieced together by Nasa to form a panoramic view and stunning first postcard from the Red Planet.
The images are stored on the robot's onboard computer
which uses each chance it gets to communicate with Earth and
send home the photos, experts at Nasa explained as they set
about piecing together what amounts to a history-making
puzzle.
The US space agency yesterday put on display 3-D
black-and-white images of Mars sent back at the weekend in the
hours after Rover landed.
The new colour pictures will provide a postcard
panorama of the surface, though they could take a week to be
sent back to earth, according to James Bell, a member of the
Rover's imaging team.
"We acquired the images successfully, they are in the
Rover memory. We have to send them down now. The reason we
know is that we have thumbnails of the pictures," said Steve
Squyres, the mission scientific expert.
Spirit was expected to begin beaming the first
high-resolution colour images at around 0800 GMT (1330 IST)
today.
Squyres is one of about 280 scientists involved in
the project who now have to get up 40 minutes earlier every
day to catch up with Martian time.
Bureau Report
