The world has been spellbound by the striking images of the never-before seen region of the Red Planet sent by NASA's Curiosity Mars Rover. But here's something that would stun you even more by allowing you to experience a virtual tour of Mars.
Web developer and panographer Andrew Bodrov has used a panoramic photo of Mars from Curiosity and created an interactive 360-degree image of the planet that lets you navigate around the Martial surface just as you would do with Google Earth.
As noted by The Daily Mail, the image that appears on the blog 360Cities allows you to look around the terrain on Mars as if you were standing right on top of the Curiosity rover.
Check out the remarkable interactive graphics below:
Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2 in New Mexico
Meanwhile, Curiosity sent several more images from Mars' surface Tuesday, nine days after it landed on the Red Planet. Check out the photos below:
This color-enhanced view -- taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the satellite flew overhead -- shows the terrain around the rover's landing site within Gale Crater on Mars. Colors were enhanced to bring out subtle differences, showing that the landing region is not as colorful as regions to the south, closer to Mount Sharp, where Curiosity will eventually explore. In reality, the blue colors are more gray. The rover itself is seen as the circular object, with the blast pattern from its descent stage seen as relatively blue colors. The dark dune fields lying between the rover and Mount Sharp can be seen in the lower portion of the picture. Mount Sharp is out of view, below the image frame. The rover is about 980 feet (300 meters) from the bottom of the picture. This image was acquired six days after Curiosity landed at an angle of 30 degrees from straight down, looking west. Another image looking more directly down will be acquired in five days, completing a stereo pair along with this image. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
This color-enhanced view of NASA's Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the satellite flew overhead. Colors have been enhanced to show the subtle color variations near the rover, which result from different types of materials. The descent stage blast pattern around the rover is clearly seen as relatively blue colors (true colors would be more gray). Curiosity landed within Gale Crater, a portion of which is pictured here. The mountain at the center of the crater, called Mount Sharp, is located out of frame to the southeast. North is up. This image was acquired at an angle of 30 degrees from straight down, looking west. Another image looking more directly down will be acquired in five days, completing a stereo pair along with this image. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. (1:32 a.m. EDT, August 6) near the foot of a mountain that was three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside the Gale Crater. Since then, the rover has sent a number of pictures, including black-and-white views of the rocky ground in front of the rover.
Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools are the first of their kind on Mars, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking elemental composition of rocks from a distance.