LOS ANGELES, March 4 (Xinhua) -- NASA's Curiosity rover has captured its highest-resolution panorama of the Martian surface, according to a release of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on Wednesday.
Composed of more than 1,000 images taken during the 2019 Thanksgiving holiday and carefully assembled over the ensuing months, the composite contains 1.8 billion pixels of Martian landscape.
The rover's Mast Camera (Mastcam) used its telephoto lens to produce the panorama. Meanwhile, it relied on its medium-angle lens to produce a lower-resolution, nearly 650-million-pixel panorama that includes the rover's deck and robotic arm.
Both panoramas showcase "Glen Torridon," a region on the side of Mount Sharp that Curiosity is exploring.
It required more than 6.5 hours over the four days for Curiosity to capture the individual shots. Mastcam operators programmed the complex task list, which included pointing the rover's mast and making sure the images were in focus.
"While many on our team were at home enjoying turkey, Curiosity produced this feast for the eyes," said Ashwin Vasavada, Curiosity's project scientist at JPL, which leads the Curiosity rover mission. "This is the first time during the mission we've dedicated our operations to a stereo 360-degree panorama."
In 2013, Curiosity produced a 1.3-billion-pixel panorama using both Mastcam cameras.
