My Pick of Pic's Jan 4, 2004 MER A - Spirit Landing Site This is the first panoramic mosaic from the Spirit rover at Gusev base on Mars. It was a fantasticly exciting evening as the mission team expertly guided the rover to a safe landing. To everyone's supprise, all of the best case senarios came to pass. We were all prepared to wait for days to get the first pictures. Instead they came down the first night. Although we all know better, they actually made it seem easy. This first image is rather raw, low res, and hastily assembled - but it does its job. With that in mind, we can get a sense of where Spirit has landed. It is a relatively easy site to navigate with a low rock population and flat terain. There are no major obstructions for the rover at egress. And there are exactly the types of features that the science team needs to discover the story that surrounds the formation of this site. This is an exciting time of discovery and exploration. JPL Home for the latest news Press release images Raw images