Eye-Popping Interactive Panorama from the Curiosity Rover

curiosity-self-portrait.jpg

There's an incredible new

interactive panorama

from the latest Curiosity rover's self-portrait and surroundings at the "John Klein" drilling site. It was put together by photographer Andrew Bodrov and combines the recent self-portrait and other images to create a full 360-degree panorama created from hundreds of images. The mosaic stretches about 30,000 pixels width.

Click here to see (and go play with) the panorama.

The pan includes the self-portrait, which consists of 66 different images (seen above) taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (Feb. 3, 2013 here on Earth), along with 113 images taken on Sol 170 and an additional 17 images taken on Sol 176.

Here's the full pan in a non-interactive view:

[caption id="attachment_99948" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

Curiosity panorama. Credit: NASA/JPL/MSSS, image editing by Andrew Bodrov. [/caption]

In the pan, you can see the holes in the rock named John Klein -- in memory of a Mars Science Laboratory deputy project manager who died in 2011. The

historic first drilling

took place on Feb. 8, 2013, and by zooming around and in, you can also see the

weird little shiny protuberance we've been talking about

(look for the pile of rocks to the right of the rover.)

Bodrov is a photographer from Estonia who specializes in interactive panoramic photography. He did a

previous Curiosity pan in August 2012

and he's also taken lots of images at the

Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com