The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released on Monday the first 360-degree, color panoramic photo taken by the Mars rover Spirit. 

A team of 24 scientists and engineers assembled the sweeping panorama from 225 separate images taken by the rover's panoramic cameras.

The panorama showed a landscape that is pancake flat in some directions and rolling in others. The topography appears dominated by mounds of material cast off when asteroids or comets pummeled the Martian surface in the distant past, punching out craters.

"The whole panorama is there before us. It's a great opening for the next stage in our mission, which is getting off the lander and out into this field," said Michael Malin, a member of the mission control.

At present, Spirit is ready to go. The golf cart-sized, unmanned rover was unfolded Friday from a tight crouch and raised to its full height of 1.48 meters. Cables holding the middle set of its six wheels were cut Saturday, leaving just the umbilical attached.

And in another milestone, the robotic arm was swung up to lock in front of the rover for driving position.

NASA plans to cut the umbilical in the following two or three days, and to require the rover to pirouette 115 degrees to its right to get off the lander.

Spirit, which landed on Mars on Jan. 3, is the fourth US probe to successfully land on the Red Planet, following two Viking landers in the 1970s and the Pathfinder mission in 1997. Spirit's twin explorer, the rover Opportunity, is due to land on the opposite side of the planet on Jan. 24.

(Xinhua News Agency January 14, 2004)