Panorama from Curiosity’s Sol 1000 Location (Stereo)

This stereo view from the Navigation Camera (Navcam) on NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows a 360-degree panorama around the location where the rover spent its 1,000th Martian day, or sol, on Mars. The image appears three-dimensional when viewed through red-blue glasses with the red lens on the left.

Sol 1,000 of Curiosity's Mars-surface mission corresponded to May 30, 2015. The component images for this scene were taken on Sol 997 (May 27, 2015). The site is a valley just below "Marias Pass" on lower Mount Sharp. A map of the area is at http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/images/Curiosity_Location_Sol997-full.jpg .

The center of the scene is toward the south, with north at both ends. This stereo view combines images from Navcam left-eye and right-eye cameras. A single-eye version of the scene is at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19679 .

Tracks from the rover's drive to this site are visible at right. The rover team chose this location near Marias Pass because images from orbit showed what appeared to be a contact between two types of bedrock. The two types are evident in this panorama. The bedrock close to the rover is pale mudstone similar to what Curiosity examined in 2014 and early 2015 at "Pahrump Hills." The darker, finely bedded bedrock above it is sandstone that the rover team calls the "Stimson" unit. The largest-looking slab of Stimson sandstone in the image, in the lower left quadrant, is a target called "Ronan," selected for close-up inspection.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Curiosity project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL built the rover and Navcam. More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.nasa.gov/msl/ .