The Heights of Mount Sharp - Another Day up!

With the addition of four high-resolution Navigation Camera, or Navcam, images, taken on Aug. 18 (Sol 12), Curiosity's 360-degree landing-site panorama now includes the highest point on Mount Sharp visible from the rover. Mount Sharp's peak is obscured from the rover's landing site by this highest visible point. 

The Martian mountain rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) above the floor of Gale Crater. Geological deposits near the base of the Mount Sharp are the destination of the Curiosity rover's mission.

The pointy rim of Gale Crater can be seen as a lighter strip along the top right of the image. Mount Sharp can be seen along the top left. This full-resolution image shows part of the deck of NASA's Curiosity rover taken from one of the rover's Navigation cameras looking toward the back left of the rover.

The image is a cylindrical projection, which shows the horizon as flat. A cylindrical projection is created by computing the azimuth and elevation of each pixel in the original image and remapping it onto a virtual cylinder. Pixels in the same row of this image are at the same elevation, and pixels in the same column of this image are at the same azimuth.

Along with the four Navcam images taken on the 18th, each 1,024 by 1,024 pixels, this mosaic includes 26 Navcam images, of equivalent resolution, taken late at night on Aug. 7 PDT (early morning Aug. 8 EDT). Seams between the images have been minimized as much as possible.

The previously released, 26-image Navcam mosaic can be found at:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16074.html.

Mars Science Laboratory is a project of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The mission is managed by JPL. Curiosity was designed, developed and assembled at JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more about NASA's Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl, http://www.nasa.gov/mars, andhttp://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

(Direct from : NASA Server Stats)

Take a virtual tour of Mars on your iPhone or iPad

Good morning, Red Planet! Take an interactive tour by viewing this super-sexy panorama on your iDevice.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET)

If you've been following the Curiosity rover's progress even a little, you've probably seen the cool360-degree Mars panorama that hit the Web a couple days ago.

As CNET's Amanda Kooser pointed out, it's "about as close as you'll get to being there."

Now you can get even closer, virtually speaking. It turns out that the panorama works with gyroscopes, meaning that if you view it on your iPhone or iPad, you'll get a much more interactive experience.

Stop listening to me describe it and go do it:

1. Open up the Safari browser on your iDevice.
2. Point your browser to this link: http://www.360cities.net/image/curiosity-rover-martian-solar-day-2
3. Tilt your screen. Raise your screen. Lower your screen. Turn in place. See what happens.

Are you grinning like a little kid yet? Call me easily impressed (or a little kid), but this takes one of the coolest things I've ever seen and makes it even cooler.

Mars. In full panorama. Moving as I move. I'm in geek heaven.

By the way, you can still pinch in or out to change the zoom. My advice: load up Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (better known as the soundtrack to "2001: A Space Odyssey"), blast it full volume, and imagine yourself standing on Mars.

Then sit down and marvel at what we've accomplished as a species. Rockets. Mars rovers. Mars rovers with cameras. Interplanetary connectivity. And handheld devices for viewing it all. Damn.

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