The Curiosity Mars rover has lifted its mast and used its high navigation cameras for the first time.
The robot vehicle has returned black and white images that capture part of its own body, its shadow on the ground and views off to the horizon.
Spectacular relief - the rim cliffs of the crater in which the rover landed - can be seen in the distance.
Curiosity - also known as the Mars Science Laboratory, MSL - put down on the Red Planet on Monday (GMT).
It came to rest on the floor of a deep depression on Mars' equator known as Gale Crater, close to a mountain.
The plan eventually is to take the rover to the base of this mountain where it is expected to find rocks that were laid down billions of years ago in the presence of liquid water.
Curiosity will probe these sediments for evidence that past environments on Mars could once have favoured microbial life.
Since its landing, engineers have been running through a list of health checks and tests.
The mast was stowed for the journey to Mars, lying flat on the deck of the rover.
Raising it into the vertical was the main task of Sol 2 - the second full Martian day of surface operations.
Locked in the upright, the masthead and its cameras stand some 2m above the ground.
Curiosity has two pairs of black and white, greyscale, navigation cameras which can aquire stereo imagery to help the rover pick a path across the surface.
These Navcams sit just to the side of two science cameras - one wideangle, one telephoto. It is these Mastcams that will provide the really exquisite, true colour views of the Martian landscape.
- (A) Curiosity will trundle around its landing site looking for interesting rock features to study. Its top speed is about 4cm/s
- (B) This mission has 17 cameras. They will identify particular targets, and a laser will zap those rocks to probe their chemistry
- (C) If the signal is significant, Curiosity will swing over instruments on its arm for close-up investigation. These include a microscope
- (D) Samples drilled from rock, or scooped from the soil, can be delivered to two hi-tech analysis labs inside the rover body
- (E) The results are sent to Earth through antennas on the rover deck. Return commands tell the rover where it should drive next
Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19186237#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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