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Still Shining After All This Time (Vertical)

Jan. 4, 2006
This self-portrait of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit taken in Aug 27, 2005 shows its solar panels still gleaming in Martian sunlight and carrying only a thin veneer of dust two years after the rover landed and began exploring the red planet.

The most recent self-portrait of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit shows the solar panels still gleaming in the Martian sunlight and carrying only a thin veneer of dust two years after the rover landed and began exploring the red planet. Spirit's panoramic camera took this mosaic of images on the 586th sol, or Martian day, of exploration (Aug. 27, 2005), as part of a mammoth undertaking that resulted in the largest panorama ever acquired by Spirit ( http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20051205a.html; https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA03610). This image is a subset of that panorama, showing just the rover. The vertical projection used here produces the best view of the rover deck itself, though it distorts the ground and antennas somewhat.

This image is an approximate true-color rendering that combines images taken through the camera's 600-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 480-nanometer filters.

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