NASA Mars Picture of the Day: 2 Years on Mars! MOC View of Spirit Rover on Husband Hill

Two years ago, the Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, touched down in Gusev Crater. The rover marked its first Mars-year (687 Earth Days) anniversary in November 2005. Shortly before its martian anniversary, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) team acquired an image covering approximately 3 km by 3 km (1.9 mi by 1.9 mi) centered on the rover’s current location in the Columbia Hills.

The first picture (MOC2-1331a) shows the 2 November 2005 image with a spatial resolution of about 50 centimeters (~1.6 feet) per pixel. The white box indicates the location of the view in the third picture (MOC2-1331c). The colored portion of the second picture (MOC2-1331b) is a 3-d anaglyph (requiring use of 3-d glasses with a red left eye and blue right eye) showing a portion of the Columbia Hills. The largest or tallest peak is that of Husband Hill, which was climbed by the Spirit rover during much of 2005.

The third picture (MOC2-1331c) shows the Spirit rover at its 2 November 2005 (Sol 652) location. Dr. Timothy J. Parker of the Mars Exploration Rover team at the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed the location of the rover in the MOC image. The region south (toward the bottom) of these images shows the area where the rover is currently headed. The large dark patch and other similar dark patches in these images are accumulations of windblown sand and granules.

The fourth picture (MOC2-1331d) shows the location of the rover in the 2 November 2005 image (S12-00095) inside a white circle. This is compared with the view taken on 10 January 2004 in R13-01467. Back on 10 January 2004, very few ever dreamed that the rover would ever reach the Columbia Hills. A Mars year later, the rover was at the summit and then headed down the other side of the hills.

Previous MOC Views of Spirit Rover:

• MOC View of Spirit’s Trek to the Columbia Hills, 3 January 2005
• cPROTO View of Spirit’s Rover Tracks, 27 September 2004
• MGS MOC Image of Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit, on Mars, 23 January 2004

MOC2-1331a: cPROTO image, 2 November 2005 25% size (2.2 MB) — 50% size (7.5 MB) Full size (28.9 MB) — Full size, no annotation (28.3 MB) NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

MOC2-1331b: 3-D Anaglyph, red/blue glasses required 25% size (1.6 MB) — 50% size (5.5 MB) Full size (20.5 MB) NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

MOC2-1331c: Spirit Location, 2 November 2005 50% size (400 KB) Full size (1.2 MB) NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

MOC2-1331d: A “before” image from January 2004 (left) and the rover image from November 2005 (right) Full size (350 KB) NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems

Location near: 14.8°S, 184.6°W

MOC2-1331a & MOC2-1331b Image width: ~3 km (~1.9 mi); MOC2-1331d 50 m scale bar = 164 ft

Illumination from: left

Season: Southern Summer in both R13-01467 and S12-00095