07 January 2004	Wednesday	14 Ziqa'ad 1424

PASADENA, Jan 6: The US robot probe Spirit has snapped the first full-colour images of its surroundings on Mars, pieced together by Nasa to form a panoramic view and stunning first postcard from the red planet.

The images are stored on the robot's onboard computer which uses each chance it gets to communicate with earth and send home the photos, experts at Nasa explained as they set about piecing together what amounts to a history-making puzzle.

The US space agency on Monday put on display 3-D black-and-white images of Mars sent back at the weekend in the hours after Rover landed. The new colour pictures will provide a postcard panorama of the surface, though they could take a week to be sent back to Earth, according to James Bell, a member of the Rover's imaging team.

"We acquired the images successfully, they are in the Rover memory. We have to send them down now. The reason we know is that we have thumbnails of the pictures," said Steve Squyres, the mission scientific expert.

Squyres said Spirit is expected to begin beaming the first high-resolution colour images at around 0800 GMT Tuesday. Squyres is one of about 280 scientists involved in the project who now have to get up 40 minutes earlier every day to catch up with Martian time.-AFP