NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity surveys vast Endeavour Crater. The rover reached the 14-mile wide depression this week to study the soil and rocks for evidence of a warmer, wetter past. Image Credit/NASA Image
NASA’s long-lived Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover reached the rim of Endeavour crater on the Red Planet late Tuesday, surveying new terrain that the mechanical geologist will explore for evidence of past warmer and wetter climes that may have been suitable for life.
Opportunity, which plunked down on the Martian terrain in January 2004, wheeled to the rim of the depression after a three-year, 13-mile trek from Victoria Crater.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Opportunity’s orbital companion, spied signs of clay minerals in vast Endeavour crater, prompting the long journey for the golf car sized rover. On Earth, clay minerals form in standing bodies of water — which have been long absent from the rocky Martian terrain.
“We’re soon going to get the opportunity to sample a rock type the rovers haven’t seen yet,” said Matthew Golombek, a Mars Exploration Rover science team member, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Clay minerals form in wet conditions. So, we may learn about a potentially habitable environment that appears to have been very different from those responsible for the rocks comprising the plains.”
Opportunity sits at Spirit Point, which was named for Opportunity’s companion rover, Spirit. The rolling spacecraft landed on Mars within weeks of each other for what were to be 90-day missions.
Spirit and Opportunity proved far more durable. Spirit’s mission ended earlier this year, after a loss of power and mechanical problems.
NASA’s newest rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Curiosity, is undergoing preparations for a late November launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
Twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity made Mars home in January 2004. Image Credit/NASA Image
The larger Curiosity is plutonium powered to afford the mobile laboratory more range than its smaller siblings. MSL will aim for an August 2012 landing at Gale Crater, where it will join the search for evidence of past Martian habitats suitable for microbial iife.
“Opportunity’s findings and data from the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory will play a key role in making possible future human missions to Mars and other places where humans have not yet been.” NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Wednesday, marking the rover’s arrival at Endeavour.