PASADENA. California, July 6: Mars Pathfinder's rover may have been out of commission for a while, but the lander's 3-D camera worked Just fine, reports AP.

As engineers scrambled Saturday to fix a balky modem and get the Sojourner rover rolling, scientists marveled at frame after frame of rocky Martian plain.

"Open your imagination to the experience and beauty of landing on Mars", camera scientist Peter Smith said as he unveiled the first images Friday evening. "With these Images we are started on our mission."

The pictures portray rocky, red plains beneath a salmon-coloured sky. Small bumps dot the horizon, and about 45 kma (20 miles) away is a much larger

hill more than 300 metres (1,000 feet) high.

The site has substantially more relief than any other place we've ever seen on Mars," said project scientist Matthew Golombek.

Scientists pointed to a pair of dark blue rocks very near the lander, both standing out against the rusty. Martian redness. Those will be among the Sojourner rover's first destinations if It ever gets under way.

Farther off. bunches of boulders are layered like books lying slanted on a shelf. Their position indicates that they were all deposited there billions of years ago by a rapidly flowing current coming from highlands to the south

Since ALH84001, the controversial Antarctic meteorite

that may contain signs of life on Mars, is thought to be a highland rock, geologists are eager to study the layered boulders.

Both the lander and rover cameras, as well as Sojourner's alpha proton X-ray spectrome-tre. a device designed to identify chemical elements in Martian rocks and soil, could yield clues to the boulders' geologic history.

There are also some oddities In the Pathfinder pictures that scientists would love to get a closer look at: A sofa-llke object crouching on the horizon, a barely discernible crater rim about three kilometres (two miles) away and they're all there to look at." Golombek said. That's Just what we wanted."