MER-A(Spirit) was launched on June 10th 2003 and will land in the Gustav crater on January 4th 2004. The Gustav crater was chosen since it appears to be the site of an ancient lakebed, where layers of sediment were deposited by a long-term flow of water into the basin formed by the crater.

These two images show the landing site and surrounding area, they were created using Bryce and MOLA topographic data from NASA. The white areas are fog/mist which does really occur on Mars.

The Gustav crater has a winding riverbed leading up to it, it is 150km in diameter and its walls are about 2 km high. This contour map shows the topology of the area in detail.

Click on the thumbnails for larger images. The black cross marks the center of the landing ellipse.

The images below were created from the Mars Explorer software, They were taken from three different points within the landing ellipse. They simulate the view from 3 meters above the surface. The maximum view distance was set to 40km, the terrain is rendered to scale, surface curvature is taken into account. Longitude, latitude and bearing information are shown on the larger images.

Looking East from the Eastern edge of landing ellipse. The mountains in the distance are Gustav's crater walls, they are up to 2.5km high.	View from the center of the landing ellipse looking South. The small hills ahead are the wall of an impact crater within Gustav crater that is roughly 300 meters deep.	Looking West from a little inside the Western edge of the landing ellipse. The mountains are Gustav's crater walls, on this side they are up to 1.5km high.