PASADENA: 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 on 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.

Clad in blue jeans and cowboy boots, Squyres proudly displays a specially designed watch that falls late 39 minutes and 35 seconds every day, showing time on Mars.

"It's a unique piece, specially modified," boasts the scientist. Spirit's camera was to collect 75 images with every photo taken five times, each with a different filter, to make possible the high-definition panoramic take.

Bell said a week might be enough time to get all the image data to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, some 500 million kilometres away from Mars. He said the picture files could come in at a hefty 100 megabytes.

Black-and-white pictures sent back so far from the six-wheel robotic probe give a clear depiction of the rock-strewn plain surrounding the rover which landed on the Gusev crater, south of the Martian equator, on Saturday.

New pictures, which are snapped from a vertical arm extended above Spirit, will allow NASA to decide where it wants to drive the rover on its three month mission of exploration on Mars.

Squyres said a depression about 10 meters wide lying 12-15 meters (40-50 feet) from Spirit looks a tempting spot to start exploration. NASA has christened the hole "Sleepy Hollow".

"It's a hole in the ground, a window in the interior of Mars, it's a very exciting feature for us, probably the place we are going to go first," Squyres said. The pictures will also help mission managers select which soils and rocks to analyze. For the moment, the robot probe is about 40 centimetres off the ground on the airbags that cushioned its impact on landing.-AFP