As NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit began collecting images for a
360-degree panorama of new terrain, the rover captured this view of a dark
boulder with an interesting surface texture. The boulder sits about 40
centimeters (16 inches) tall on Martian sand about 5 meters (16 feet) away
from Spirit. It is one of many dark, volcanic rock fragments -- many
pocked with rounded holes called vesicles -- littering the slope of "Low
Ridge." The rock surface facing the rover is similar in appearance to the
surface texture on the outside of lava flows on Earth.
Spirit took this false-color image with the panoramic camera on the
rover's 810th sol, or Martian day, of exploring Mars (April 13, 2006).
This image is a false-color rendering using camera's 753-nanometer,
535-nanometer, and 432-nanometer filters.
