"It aids our interpretation of orbital images of other places," said Alfred McEwen, with the University of Arizona in Tucson and the principal investigator for MRO's high fidelity camera.
The pictures already have forced Phoenix mission planners to scrap their first-choice landing spot.
"We found boulders the size of VW Bugs," Manning said in an interview with Discovery News. "Even if we landed there safely, we wouldn't be able to open the solar arrays because you'd bang into a boulder. So we have to bail out on our No. 1 science site."
MRO's family album not only includes the Mars Pathfinder, but also the parachutes, airbags, pieces of the heat shield and other gear the spacecraft used to descend and land on the planet's surface. The team is still on the hunt for Pathfinder's small rover, Sojourner.
"This is so cool," Manning said. "We had a mental picture of where things were on Mars, but we couldn't see them. It's a lot of fun to see our hand-made equipment on Mars."
