Opportunity's Surroundings on Sol 1950 (Stereo)

Left-eye view of a color stereo pair for PIA12143

Right-eye view of a color stereo pair for PIA12143

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera to take the images combined into this 360-degree stereo view of the rover's surroundings on the 1,950th Martian day, or sol, of its surface mission (July 19, 2009). The view appears three-dimensional when viewed through red-blue glasses with the red lens on the left. South is in the middle; north at both ends.

Opportunity had driven 60.8 meters (199 feet) that sol, moving backward as a strategy to mitigate an increased amount of current drawn by the drive motor in the right-front wheel. The rover was traveling a westward course, skirting a large field of impassable dunes to the south.

Much of the terrain surrounding the Sol 1950 position is wind-formed ripples of dark soil, with pale outcrop exposed in troughs between some ripples. A small crater visible nearby to the northwest is informally called "Kaiko." For scale, the distance between the parallel wheel tracks is about 1 meter (about 40 inches).

The site is about 3.8 kilometers (2.4 miles) south-southwest of Victoria Crater.

This panorama combines right-eye and left-eye views presented as cylindrical-perspective projections with geometric seam correction.