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Life on Red Planets

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Description

Over the last few sols, Spirit struggled mightily to reach a rock outcrop called "Clovis," overcoming the challenge of rough, steep terrain and subsequent backsliding. The site is near the crest of the "West Spur" of "Columbia Hills."

On sol 205, Spirit attempted to reach Clovis by climbing out of the sandy hollow in which it was sitting. Unfortunately, on a slope of more than 20 degrees, slippage caused Spirit to dance around the outcrop. The drive was finally cut off by a time-of-day limit on rover mobility.

On sol 206, as dawn broke over the horizon, Spirit's recovered camera picked up this disturbing image. After rolling down the embankment, it had stumbled on the first of Mars recorded life! This hi-res image appears to be a small... pine tree....






:D

This was such a fun shot to take, I am soo happy with the way it turned out. 5 points to anyone who can figure out how I put this together. :)

~Orion

p.s., this is not the same tree as the one in Green Hope
Image size
1614x1094px 2.53 MB
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Comments5
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kelticangel's avatar
Is it too late to guess? ^_^
The foreground isn't gravel, but good, red, mossy dirt - the kind you commonly find around spruce forests. It rather looks like you just stuck the end of a twig into the ground.
The blurring back is natural because of the lens, but clarifying again? I don't know enough about cameras, but that looks like it was patched in later - as does the hill/boulder.