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NASA's Mars Exploration Program (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
Sol 437: Driving to Cooperstown
Last weekend's 3-sol plan included back-to-back drives on Sols 436 and 437. This is the first time in the mission that this has been attempted. There was no tactical planning on Monday to allow Mars and Earth time to synch up, but the rover drivers reviewed the available data before giving their go for the second drive. There was applause during the SOWG meeting when the rover drivers announced that both drives had completed successfully!
This morning, planning started at 6:00 PDT, earlier than usual to give us enough time to complete planning before the commands must be sent to the rover this afternoon. So we are sort of back on Mars time today, which is exciting enough that I had no trouble getting up before dawn. I'm MAHLI/MARDI uplink lead today, planning the usual images after another drive toward the second waypoint, called Cooperstown.
Written by Ken Herkenhoff
Other panoramas of Mars by Curiosity rover:
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The planet Earth has proven to be too limiting for our awesome community of panorama photographers. We're getting an increasing number of submissions that depict locations either not on Earth (like Mars, the Moon, and Outer Space in general) or do not realistically represent a geographic location on Earth (either because they have too many special effects or are computer generated) and hence don't strictly qualify for our Panoramic World project.But many of these panoramas are extremely beautiful or popular of both.So, in order to accommodate our esteemed photographers and the huge audience that they attract to 360Cities with their panoramas, we've created a new section (we call it an "area") called "Out of this World" for panoramas like these.Don't let the fact that these panoramas are being placed at the Earth's South Pole fool you - we had to put them somewhere in order not to interfere with our Panoramic World.Welcome aboard on a journey "Out of this World".