West Valley Panorama from the Spirit Rover on Mars
What does Mars look like from here?
Last September, before hiking across rugged and
slippery terrain to reach its winter hibernation point, the
robotic Spirit rover
climbed a small plateau known as
Home Plate
and captured the spectacular vista
pictured above.
Part of the curious flat-topped Home Plate is visible as the
light colored landscape across the panorama's foreground.
On the image left, visible about eight kilometers in the distance, is
Grissom Hill,
while on the left foreground is rock strewn
Tsiolkovski Ridge.
On the right, at about 800 meters distant, is
Husband Hill,
already explored by Spirit and notable as the
highest point visible in the westward looking panorama.
In the inset is a close-up of a tiny motionless feature
informally dubbed Little Bigfoot
that has
drawn
some
attention for it
superficial appearance to a
humanoid life form.
Tenacious image explorers might locate Little
Bigfoot
towards the front left of the
high resolution panorama.
Spirit successfully
reached
its energy-conserving
winter haven in December.