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The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

Spirit and the Viking Landers spotted from HiRISE

Dec. 5, 2006 | 16:02 PST | Dec. 6 00:02 UTC

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Opportunity's is not the only landing site that has been spotted using the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Yesterday, the team released new images of the Spirit, Viking 1, and Viking 2 lander sites. A. J. S. Rayl posted a story on these images today. The Spirit spot is tremendous -- not only can you see the parachute, for instance, but you can see folds in the parachute.

HiRISE's view of Spirit parachute
The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter MRO took this image of Spirit's parachute and backshell on November 22, 2006. Credit: NASA / JPL / Univ. of Arizona

And seeing the rover close to Home Plate is just precious.

Spirit as seen from HiRISE
HiRISE captured this image of Spirit at Low Ridge Haven on November 22, 2006, the rover's sol 1026. The image has been enlarged by a factor of 2 to make the rover more visible. Source Credit: NASA / JPL / U. Arizona

Quite a lot of Spirit's tracks are visible, if you know where to look. I've downloaded the entire 1.2 Gigabyte HiRISE image and clipped out the parts covering Spirit's trek, should you care to try to follow on your own. Here's a map of most of the traverse based on the MOC views to get you started, and here's the HiRISE clips:

Backshell to Missoula (1.69 MB)
Missoula, halfway through the trek to the hills (1.66 MB)
Halfway through the trek, to Tecopa (1.87 MB)
West Spur through Husband Hill Summit to Haskin Ridge (1.18 MB)
Husband, Haskin, El Dorado, and Home Plate (1.03 MB)

I've got lots more to post about these new HiRISE images, including the ones of Viking 1 and 2, but with tomorrow's Mars Global Surveyor announcement and other projects I'm working on I haven't been able to get the hours together to post about them. Soon!

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