Distorted Distance Perspective in Martian Rover Camera Images

Actual length of the entire bedrock outcrop is only 50 feet long and the distance from the outcrop to the small, white, unidentified object at the bottom of the frame is no more than about 14 feet. The small "horned" object, according to Prof. James Rice, is about "the size of a man's fist." Original Opportunity panoramic image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell.

February 18, 2004 Pasadena, California - The NASA/JPL Martian rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, each came down near the Martian equator about 6,600 miles apart protected inside many inflated airbags. Each airbag was about 13 feet (4 meters) in diameter and had a stitched pattern of a ring with lines radiating from it. The idea was that each lander would be dropped from its orbiting spacecraft and fall to a bouncing landing inside the airbags. Soon after Opportunity came to rest on January 25, 2004, the rover's panoramic camera took a 360 degree image of the shallow crater surrounding it on the Meridiani Planum near the Martian equator.

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