"Legacy Panorama"

The Legacy Panorama is a full 360 degree view that began as a survey of the area surrounding the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity as she descended Perseverance Valley into Endeavour Crater. However, the solar–powered rover succumbed to a global Martian dust storm on June 10, 2018, preventing the final images that would have otherwise been acquired for the panorama from ever being taken and making this panorama Opportunity's parting view to us here on Earth. Located on the inner slope of the western rim of Endeavour Crater, Perseverance Valley is a system of shallow troughs descending eastward about the length of two football fields from the crest of Endeavour's rim to its floor.

The rim of Endeavour Crater is rising in the distance to the right of center, and just to the left of that, rover tracks begin their descent into the valley before weaving their way down to geologic features that the rover's science team wanted to investigate. Other features, as well as the exact location of the crater rim and the rover's entry point into the valley, are identified on the annotated image.

Although Opportunity's mission ended after almost 15 years of exploration and discovery on the surface of Mars, her legacy lives on. Opportunity's scientific discoveries contributed to our unprecedented understanding of the planet's geology and environment, laying the groundwork for future robotic and human missions to the Red Planet.

The Legacy Panorama is composed of 354 individual images provided by the rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, 2018, or sols (Martian days) 5,084 through 5,111. A few frames (bottom left) remain black and white, as the solar-powered rover did not have the time to photograph those locations using the green and violet filters before a severe Mars-wide dust storm swept in on June 2018.

Images taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nm, 535 nm, and 432 nm were mixed to produce this view, which is presented in a false-color stretch to bring out subtle color differences in the scene.

Full Size JPG | Full Size TIFF
Image Dimensions: 23123 x 5163
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU
Image mosaicking: Jon Beans Proton and Jonathan Joseph
Calibration and color rendering: CCC
and the Pancam team (Jim Bell)

Images taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nm, 535 nm, and 432 nm were mixed to produce an approximately true-color panorama.

The left-eye and right-eye mosaics combined into this stereo anaglyph for 3D viewing through red-blue glasses were generated using the Pancam's 753 nm filter from the left camera and the 754 nm filter from the right camera.