NASA’s Opportunity rover continues on its red planet travels, completing early this month a week of driving.
The robot is making its way toward Endeavour crater. Camera shots from the rover show this feature in ever-greater detail as it drives closer and closer.
En route to Endeavour crater, the wheeled machine is passing a set of small impact craters for some drive-by imaging (as seen here).
Opportunity is rolling roughly an East/Southeast direction.
On the morning of November 4, Opportunity woke early to catch an image of the transit of Phobos – one of Mars’ two moons – as it zipped across the Martian sky.
Meanwhile, at another locale on Mars, the Spirit rover has been silent since March 2010. Ground controllers believe the robot is in a low-power hibernation mode for the Martian winter.
Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 for what were planned as three-month missions. Bonus, extended missions have continued for more than six years.
Opportunity is currently active, requiring daily activity plans by a team of engineers at JPL, and scientists at many locations in North America and Europe.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California is currently building and testing NASA’s next Mars rover, Curiosity, for launch in late 2011 in the Mars Science Laboratory mission.
This large rover will land on Mars in August 2012.
By Leonard David