Have you noticed how smooth those rocks look?
They're nothing like the rocks seen where Pathfinder touched down or where Viking landed.
Original Caption Released with Image: This color picture of Mars was taken July 21--the day following Viking l's successful landing on the planet. The local time on Mars is approximately noon. The view is southeast from the Viking. Orange-red surface materials cover most of the surface, apparently forming a thin veneer over darker bedrock exposed in patches, as in the lower right. The reddish surface materials may be limonite (hydrated ferric oxide). Such weathering products form on Earth in the presence of water and an oxidizing atmosphere. The sky has a reddish cast, probably due to scattering and reflection from reddish sediment suspended in the lower atmosphere. The scene was scanned three times by the spacecraft's camera number 2, through a different color filter each time. To assist in balancing the colors, a second picture was taken of z test chart mounted on the rear of the spacecraft. Color data for these patches were adjusted until the patches were an appropriate color of gray. The same calibration was then used for the entire scene. Image Note: CE LABEL 12A006/001
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Viking 2 photo
Utopian Plain The boulder-strewn field of red rocks reaches to the horizon nearly two miles from Viking 2 on Mars' Utopian Plain. Scientists believe the colors of the Martian surface and sky in this photo represent their true colors. Fine particles of red dust have settled on spacecraft surfaces. The salmon color of the sky is caused by dust particles suspended in the atmosphere. Color calibration charts for the cameras are mounted at three locations on the spacecraft. Note the blue starfield and red stripes of the flag. The circular structure at top is the high- gain antenna, pointed toward Earth. Viking 2 landed September 3, 1976, some 4600 miles from its twin, Viking 1, which touched down on July 20. Note: Unsure if this is from Camera 1 or Camera 2. This image was scanned from physical media.
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Pathfinder shot a stereoscopic view that I'll post subsequent to this one.
Original Caption Released with Image: The Twin Peaks are modest-size hills to the southwest of the Mars Pathfinder landing site. They were discovered on the first panoramas taken by the IMP camera on the 4th of July, 1997, and subsequently identified in Viking Orbiter images taken over 20 years ago. The peaks are approximately 30-35 meters (-100 feet) tall. North Twin is approximately 860 meters (2800 feet) from the lander, and South Twin is about a kilometer away (3300 feet). The scene includes bouldery ridges and swales or 'hummocks' of flood debris that range from a few tens of meters away from the lander to the distance of the South Twin Peak. The composite color frames that make up this 'left-eye' image consist of 8 frames, taken with different color filters that were enlarged by 500% and then co-added using Adobe Photoshop to produce, in effect, a super-resolution panchromatic frame that is sharper than an individual frame would be. This panchromatic frame was then colorized with the red, green, and blue filtered images from the same sequence. The color balance was adjusted to approximate the true color of Mars.
This image and PIA02406(right eye) make up a stereo pair.
Mars Pathfinder is the second in NASA's Discovery program of low-cost spacecraft with highly focused science goals. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, developed and manages the Mars Pathfinder mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The IMP was developed by the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory under contract to JPL. Peter Smith is the Principal Investigator.
