This picture, obtained on the surface of Mars, by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, looks back toward part of the west rim of Endeavour Crater that the rover drove along, traveling southward, during the summer of 2014. The tracks of the six-wheeled rover extend from bottom right.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.
On Mars, the Red Planet, from an elevated portion of the west rim of the Endeavour Crater, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recently recorded a scene (Fig. 1) looking back over its own tracks made during almost 700 meters of southward driving.
Fig. 1 is a composite produced by combining images obtained on 15 August 2014, with Opportunity's panoramic camera. The scene is included in a short video documenting the rover's entire driving path of more than 40 km since the mission's 25 January 2004 landing in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars.
Opportunity has been studying outcrops on the western rim of Endeavour Crater (22 km in across) for three years.
Opportunity launched into space on 7 July 2003, aboard the powerful Delta II rocket, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It is a small robotic six-wheeled rover, equipped with cameras and a set of science instruments, to study the rocks and soil of Mars. Among the mission’s primary goals is to investigate whether Mars’ environmental conditions were conducive to life.
Opportunity and its twin, Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, whose mission lasted from 2004 to 2011, yielded a range of findings proving wet environmental conditions on ancient Mars, some very acidic, others milder and more conducive to supporting life.
References
www.nasa.gov/
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
Wikipedia