Scientists assign names to Endeavour Crater's major features. Photo Credit: NASA JPL/Caltech
Scientists are assigning names to major features of the massive Martian impact crater Endeavour, that is the long-term destination of NASA’s Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover.
The names — Cape Dromedary, Point Hicks and Cape Byron — pay tribute to the names of sites explored by British Navy Captain James Cook during his Pacific voyage between 1769 and 1771 aboard the sailing ship HMS Endeavour.
The camera toting rover has a long way to go, about seven miles. Opportunity began the 12-mile trek in August 2008, following a two-year study of the much smaller Victoria Crater.
Why the long journey?
Scientists recently announced they’ve found evidence of clay minerals at Endeavour, among other sites on the Martian surface, using instruments aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the European Space Agency’s Mars Express, another orbiter..
These clay minerals form in water on Earth. Though Mars is cold, dry with only a thin atmosphere, it may have been more hospitable in the past. If water was present during an earlier era on Mars, conditions may have been favorable for some form of life.
Opportunity and Spirit landed on opposite sides of Mars in January 2004, starting what were to be 90-day missions.
Though showing their ages, both rovers continue to explore. Now immobile, Spirit has been designated a weather station.