Curiosity has been reliably beaming back photos from the Martian surface ever since it completed its dramatic landing a week ago, and now we have the best view yet of where the rover sits. Photographer Andrew Bodrov has stitched together images from NASA to create a Google Street View-esque version of the Red Planet. You can't virtually drive along the surface, of course, but there's no need to: you'll be completely awed by the vision the interactive picture provides. The solitude, beauty, and technological achievement represented by the shot is unavoidable as you peer up at the sun and down at the mountains in the distance. Words can't do it justice: just open it in full screen and get lost in it all.


Update: According to TPM, Bodrov said that he "used Adobe Photoshop to retouch the images and to add the Sun in the Martian sky, the size and appearance of which he approximated using an image captured in 2005 by the older NASA Mars rover Spirit." Despite the changes, the founder of 360 Cities maintains that "It is totally accurate - it is a wider-angle version of the existing photos put together."

Source: CNET and Andrew Bodrov (360 Cities)