Life on Mars?
1.8 Billion pixel panorama of Mars
It’s the largest and highest-resolution panorama of the red planet, since the launch of Curiosity — a car-sized rover designed to explore the crater Gale on Mars, as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory mission — from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on November 26, 2011.
It took over 1,000 photographs between 24 November and 01 December 2019, using the telephoto lens on the rover’s Mast Camera — “Mastcam” — to produce the final 1.8 billion pixel image.
Curiosity landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale on Mars on August 6, 2012, and it’s the only life detected on there until now. A clever little thing, but which still needs human input to make sure that the camera is pointing the right way and that the images are in focus. To ensure consistent lighting, the images were all shot between 12 noon and 2pm. In total the task took six-and-a-half hours over the four-day period, and required some complex programming from the Mastcam operators.
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