Mission Success Pan (Post-Standup) by Neville Thompson

This 360-degree panorama was acquired at Spirit's landing site on Mars in Gusev Crater, subsequently named Columbia Memorial Station. The rover was still sitting on the lander, and had "stood up" in preparation to drive off the lander. The 75 images that comprise this mosaic were acquired over five sols, during the course of which the rover did a very short "test drive" of the wheels. Because the images were taken at different times of day and across different days while the dust abundance, sun illumination (and even position) were changing, there were challenges in producing a more "seamless" rendering of the raw mosaicked product. The mosaic presented here has minimized these seams by balancing the colors. An "average" sky color was also used to remove the seams in the sky. These kinds of image processing steps yield a more aesthetically consistent rendering of the scene, as the scene would have been viewed if Spirit's cameras could have obtained the whole panorama all at once, or as a human standing there might have surveyed the view.