What does Mars look like from here? Last September, before hiking across rugged and slippery terrain to reach its winter hibernation point, the robotic Spirit rover climbed a small plateau known as Home Plate and captured the spectacular vista pictured above . Part of the curious flat-topped Home Plate is visible as the light colored landscape across the panorama's foreground. On the image left, visible about eight kilometers in the distance, is Grissom Hill , while on the left foreground is rock strewn Tsiolkovski Ridge. On the right, at about 800 meters distant, is Husband Hill , already explored by Spirit and notable as the highest point visible in the westward looking panorama. In the inset is a close-up of a tiny motionless feature informally dubbed Little Bigfoot that has drawn some attention for it superficial appearance to a humanoid life form . Tenacious image explorers might locate Little Bigfoot towards the front left of the high resolution panorama . Spirit successfully reached its energy-conserving winter haven in December.
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Credit: Mars Exploration Rover Mission , Cornell , JPL , NASA