Diverse Terrain Types on Mount Sharp, Mars

A sweeping panorama combining 33 telephoto images into one Martian vista presents details of several types of terrain visible on Mount Sharp from a location along the route of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover. The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) recorded the component images with its right-eye camera on April 10, 2015, during the 952nd Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars, before that sol's drive. The panorama spans from south-southeast, at left, to west-southwest. The color has been approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth. Higher elevations on Mount Sharp are visible at left, including the jagged skyline to the right of a 100-meter scale bar overlaid on the image. (One hundred meters is about 328 feet.) The 2-meter (7-foot) scale bar near the center of the scene is on an exposure of pale mudstone within Mount Sharp's basal geological unit, the Murray formation, and nearby darker rocks. The 3-meter (10-foot) scale bar farther to the right is at the base of a rise called "Gray Wolf Peak." "Logan Pass," a science destination for the rover, is at a dip on the horizon near the right edge of the panorama. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the rover's Mastcam. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19397