Posted by tourdemars to Mars Exploration Rovers at October 28, 2006 09:37 AM

NASA’s Spirit rover hit the 1,000-Martian day of its mission on the red planet Thursday, but the mission continues for the hardy robot. To celebrate the Martian milestone, rover mission managers released the McMurdo panorama [image], a mosaic of some 1,449 individual images taken by Spirit’s panoramic camera. “It has been a surprise and delight to see the vehicle survive as long as it has,” Jake Mapijevic, engineering team chief for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. “We had anticipated a much shorter mission.” More than 10 times shorter, in fact.