Scientists say an ancient Martian crater where the Nasa rover landed has looming mountains, hanging haze and a striking similarity to earth.
“The first impression that you get is how Earth-like this seems looking at that landscape,” chief scientist John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology said.
The rover successfully raised its mast packed with high-resolution and navigation cameras. With the mast up, it began taking a 360-degree colour view of its surroundings today.
Mr Grotzinger said he was struck by the diverse landscape which appears to have harder material underneath a gravelly surface.
“It kind of makes you feel at home,” he said. “We’re looking at a place that feels really comfortable.”
The car-size Curiosity rover has already peered around Gale Crater and returned a black-and-white self-portrait and panorama since it touched down on Sunday night.
Other shots show Curiosity looking out toward the northern horizon. Nearby scour marks in the surface blasted by thrusters, kicked up a swirl of dust. Scientists said the scour marks expose bedrock below and help them to better understand the landing site.
“We do see a thin coating of dust, but nothing too bad,” said Justin Maki, imaging scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $2.5bn mission.
Curiosity has zipped home a stream of low-resolution pictures taken by tiny cameras under the chassis and a camera at the end of its robotic arm.
Mars differs from Earth in that it is a frigid desert constantly bombarded by radiation but there are geological signs it was a warmer and wetter place in the past. One of the mission’s goals is to figure out how Mars transformed.
After sailing 352m miles and eight months, Curiosity will spend the next two years poking into rocks and soil in search of the chemical ingredients of life. It is the most expensive and ambitious mission yet to Mars.
Preliminary estimates indicate Curiosity landed four miles away from the base of Mount Sharp, thought to contain intriguing signs of past water – a starting point to learning whether microbial life could exist.