Marathon Valley Floor

        This mosaic was acquired by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on Sol 4326 (March 25, 2016). Two mosaics were taken, one before driving for the day, and the one shown here, taken following a roughly 15 meter (50 foot) drive. NOTE: Missing data and other artifacts in this mosaic are the result of the images being acquired while the Opportunity rover was operating in "RAM mode". That is, because of issues with the rover's onboard Flash memory storage, sometimes data are stored directly in the rover's volatile RAM memory instead, and then downlinked to Earth. At the end of each sol of RAM mode operations, however, when the rover shuts down, all of that sol's data is erased. Thus, any missing images, missing color channels, or data transmission errors cannot be fixed by retransmitting the missing data the following sol, like we can do during Flash mode operations. Pancam's 753nm, 535nm, and 432nm filters were used in this mosaic.  Two versions are provided at full resolution: an approximate true color rendering, and a false color rendering which enhances the subtle color differences in the scene.

Jim Bell
Pancam Instrument Lead
June 16, 2016