PIA07492: Before and After a Cleaning Event on Spirit
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Exploration Rover (MER)
 Spacecraft:  Spirit
 Instrument:  Panoramic Camera
 Product Size:  650 x 272 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  Cornell University 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA07492.tif (531.2 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA07492.jpg (19.78 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

These two images from 10 days apart show that dust was removed from the panoramic camera's calibration target on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. Spirit's panoramic camera took the picture on the left on the rover's 416th martian day, or sol, (March 5, 2005) and took the picture on the right on sol 426 (March 15, 2005). During the time in-between, other evidence of dust-lifting winds were a jump in power output by Spirit's solar arrays on sol 420 from removal of some accumulated dust, and sighting of two dust devils in sol 421 images from Spirit. The size of the base plate on the calibration target shown in both of these images is 8 centimeters (3.15 inches) on each side.

These are the panoramic camera team's best current attempt at generating "true color" views of what these scenes would look like if viewed by a human on Mars. They were generated from mathematical combinations of six calibrated, left-eye Pancam images for each sequence, using filters ranging from 430-nanometer to 750-nanometer wavelengths.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Cornell

Image Addition Date:
2005-03-23