On 25 January 2004, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed safely on Mars. Opportunity is a six-wheeled, solar-cell-powered robotic rover, which explores Mars, applying cameras and devices that study the Martian rocks and soil. It is regarded as a robot geologist. Opportunity’s scheduled mission was only 90 Martian days long. (The day on Mars is only about 39 minutes longer than Earth’s day.) However, Opportunity has successfully continued to operate on Mars, through extended missions.
NASA recently published a new video, compiling over 300 images of Opportunity, documenting the rover’s latest 3-year trek, across a plain between two Martian craters, respectively known as Victoria and Endeavour. The very slow trek lasted between September 2008 and August 2011, and was 21 km long.
The video is available online, at the following link.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=114782241
The video shows the rim of Endeavour Crater, appearing on the horizon, partway through the journey, and growing larger, as Opportunity neared this crater. There were detours in the drive, since the rover went around large expanses of treacherous terrain, along the way. For further information about Mars and the Mars Exploration Rovers, please visit the following websites.
Official Mars Rovers Websites
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
Mars Rovers on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/marsrovers
Mars Rovers on Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/marsrovers
References
NASA
www.nasa.gov/
Wikipedia