NASA’s Google+ page is a great place to find neat imagery, videos, and articles about all things space. One of the things that I found on NASA’s Google+ page today is this billion pixel imagery of the surface of Mars.  The imagery is the result of stitching together pictures taken by the Curiosity Rover between October 5 and November 16, 2012. You can explore the imagery in a panoramic or cylindrical display. 

Applications for Education
Use NASA’s new imagery of Mars in conjunction with the Mars view in Google Earth to give your students a better sense of what the surface of Mars looks like. Tie that activity into a creative writing activity in which students explore what life on Mars could look like in the future.