NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover has taken its first full-color 360-degree view of its surroundings, which NASA published online Thursday afternoon. The panorama shows the rim of the Gale Crater, the target for the mission, in the distance as a series of dunes and ridges. To the right side of the image, near the foreground, are some gray areas, which NASA says it wants to investigate further because it thinks they were caused by the rover’s landing craft rock thrusters. NASA said it did not alter the colors of the image, only brightened it, as it was taken in the afternoon on Wednesday when the sunlight filtering into Mars was low.
Below is a slice of the panorama. Click on the image to see the full panorama.
