The Mars Curiosity rover has returned some stunning images of the Red Planet as it explores the 96 mile-wide Gale Crater, where it landed in August of 2012. An image released by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the most detailed yet from its sophisticated MastCam, which was programmed to shoot more than 1000 photos over the Thanksgiving holiday last year.
Since the rover’s workload was reduced during the human holiday, engineers programmed the camera to produce a 360-degree view of its position near the 3.4-mile high Mt. Sharp while JPL went on a week-long break. The photos were then stitched together to produce the full color panorama which is made up of 1.8 billion pixels. The camera was programmed to take the pictures between noon and 2 PM Mars time over the course of the week to keep the lighting consistent.