A panoramic photo from Curiosity has been used to create
an interactive image that allows a user to navigate around
the planet's surface just as easily as you would with Google Earth.
The image was put together by web developer and panographer
Andrew Bodrov, who has done the same with world landmarks like
the Sphinx in Egypt and Moscow's Red Square
Here's The Panoramic Video Of The Photo. Enjoy! :)
With the image you can clearly see the terrain of Mars as if they were standing on top of Curiosity.
Meanwhile, the rover beamed several more incredible images from the surface of the red planet on Tuesday, nine days after it touched down there.
The new photos were released by Nasa, which revealed that it was mapping out possible driving routes to a Martian mountain.
Since landing in Gale Crater near the equator last week, the nuclear-powered rover has been busy getting a head-to-wheel health checkup while parked.
After successfully landing on the red planet on August 5, the rover produced incredible pictures showing exactly what you would see if you were standing on the surface of Mars on a late afternoon.
And its features were strikingly similar to some regions here on Earth.
A Nasa spokesman said: 'The images show a landscape that closely resembles portions of the southwestern United States in its morphology, adding to the impression gained from the lower-resolution thumbnail mosaic released early in the week.'
The colors in the main image are unmodified from those returned by the camera.
'While it is difficult to say whether this is what a human eye would see, it is what a cell phone or camcorder would record since the Mastcam takes color pictures in the exact same manner that consumer cameras acquire color images.'
Landing strip: This photo provided by Nasa on Tuesday shows the Gale Crater, the Martian landing site for the Curiosity rover
Say cheese: The images of Mars were taken from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
New images from NASA's Curiosity rover shows an area excavated by the blast of the Mars Science Laboratory's descent stage rocket engines
The parts of this mosaic that are most interesting to geologists include a section on the crater wall north of the landing site where a network of valleys believed to have formed by water erosion enters Gale Crater from the outside.
They are also studying a section that looks south of the landing site that provides an overview of the eventual geological targets Curiosity will explore, including the rock-strewn, gravelly surface nearby, the dark dune field and the layered buttes and mesas of the sedimentary rock of Mount Sharp.
Geologists were also taking a close look at an area excavated by the blast of the Mars Science Laboratory's descent stage rockets.
With the loose debris blasted away by the rockets, details of the underlying materials are seen.
Of particular note is a well-defined, topmost layer that contains fragments of rock embedded in finer material.
During the software update, engineers will add two crucial functions to Curiosity
- the ability to drive over the planet's rocky terrain and the ability to use the geochemistry lab's sampling system.
Stunning: NASA's Curiosity rover released its first colour landscape pictures from Mars on Thursday. The view shows the mountains looming in the distance
Brain transplant: Engineers are performing a four day software update on the Curiosity, pictured here showing the surface of Mars
A handout photo provided by U.S. Space Agency NASA on 09 August 2012 shows the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover
On Friday, engineers detailed how Curiosity landed approximately 1.5 miles from its predicted touchdown spot.
The first panoramic images released on Thursday were the first colour landscape photographs provided from the $2.5billion Martian rover and were taken with the probe's MastCams which extend above the spacecraft.
The panoramic mosaic, comprising 130 separate images that Curiosity captured with its newly activated navigation cameras, shows a rust-colored, pebble-strewn expanse stretching to a wall of the crater's rim in one direction and a tall mound of layered rock in another.
That formation, named Mount Sharp, stands at the center of the vast, ancient impact crater and several miles from where Curiosity touched down at the end of an eight-month voyage across 352 million mile (566 million km) of space.
The layers of exposed rock are thought to hold a wealth of Mars' geologic history, making it the main target of exploration for scientists who will use the rover to seek evidence of whether the planet most similar to Earth might now harbor or once have hosted key ingredients for microbial life.
Nasa also revealed a new colour corrected picture of the area the rover landed, clearly showing the rocks and other debris
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