NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Ascends To Level Ground

MARSDAILY

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed out of "Victoria Crater" following the tracks it had made when it descended into the 800-meter-diameter (half-mile-diameter) bowl nearly a year earlier. The rover's navigation camera captured this view back into the crater just after finishing a 6.8-meter (22-foot) drive that brought Opportunity out onto level ground during the mission's 1,634th Martian day, or sol (Aug. 28, 2008). The rover laid down the first tracks at this entry and exit point during its 1,291st sol (Sept. 11, 2007), after about a year of exploring around the outside of Victoria Crater for the best access route to the interior. On that sol, Opportunity drove a short distance into the crater and then backed out to check that the footing was good enough to trust this point as an exit route when the work in the crater was finished. Two sols later, Opportunity drove in again for its extended investigation of the rock layers exposed inside the crater.

by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (SPX) Sep 01, 2008
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has climbed out of the large crater that it had been examining from the inside since last September.

"The rover is back on flat ground," an engineer who drives it, Paolo Bellutta of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announced to the mission's international team of scientists and engineers.

Opportunity used its own entry tracks from nearly a year ago as the path for a drive of 6.8 meters (22 feet) bringing the rover out over the top of the inner slope and through a sand ripple at the lip of Victoria Crater.

The exit drive, conducted late Thursday, completed a series of drives covering 50 meters (164 feet) since the rover team decided about a month ago that it had completed its scientific investigations inside the crater.

"We're headed to the next adventure out on the plains of Meridiani," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for Opportunity and its twin Mars rover, Spirit. "We safely got into the crater, we completed our exploration there, and we safely got out. We were concerned that any wheel failure on our aging rover could have left us trapped inside the crater."

The Opportunity mission has focused on Victoria Crater for more than half of the 55 months since the rover landed in the Meridiani Planum region of equatorial Mars. The crater spans about 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter and reveals rock layers that hold clues to environmental conditions of the area through an extended period when the rocks were formed and altered.

The team selected Victoria as the next major destination after Opportunity exited smaller Endurance Crater in late 2004. The ensuing 22-month traverse to Victoria included stopping for studies along the route and escaping from a sand trap.

The rover first reached the rim of Victoria in September 2007. For nearly a year, it then explored partway around the rim, checking for the best entry route and examining from above the rock layers exposed in a series of promontories that punctuate the crater perimeter.

Now that Opportunity has finished exploring Victoria Crater and returned to the surrounding plain, the rover team plans to use tools on the robotic arm in coming months to examine an assortment of cobbles -- rocks about fist-size and larger -- that may have been thrown from impacts that dug craters too distant for Opportunity to reach.

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS
Solar Energy Solutions
Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ...

Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily
XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News

MARSDAILY

Taking The Opportunity To Escape From Crater Victoria

Pasadena CA (JPL) Sep 01, 2008
NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the Red Planet's surrounding plains nearly a year after descending into a large martian crater to examine exposed ancient rock layers. Opportunity will continue its mission to characterize the environment of Mars and help scientists determine if the planet could have been a habitat for past life in our solar system.

CIVIL NUCLEAR Iran offers nuclear aid to Nigeria Nuclear agency says construction work at Finnish reactor is safe Mitsubishi Heavy to boost reactor production: report Belgium reduces safety zone near nuclear iodine leak site	CLIMATE SCIENCE No rain, no water for hundreds of thousands of Bulgarians Methane gas oozing up from Siberian seabed: Swedish researcher New LIDAR System Sees The Sky In 3D Research In Puerto Rico On Corals And Global Warming
FARM NEWS Overfishing Pushes Baltic Cod To Brink Of Economic Extinction CSIRO Scientist Wins Major Cotton Industry Award TVA Fertilizer Technology Used Worldwide Going veggie can slash your carbon footprint, study says	FLORA AND FAUNA ESA Criticizes Bush Administration's Overhaul Of The Endangered Species Act Even Seaweeds Get Sunburned Through A Glass Darkly Exploding Chromosomes Fuel Research About Evolution
ROCKET SCIENCE Test rocket destroyed by NASA after launch NASA to use shock-absorbers to fix shaking in new Ares rocket NASA And ATK To Launch Suborbital Hypersonic Experiments Andrews Awarded Aerojet Contract To Build Hardware For Sundancer	NUCLEAR SPACE Nuclear Power In Space - Part 2 Outside View: Nuclear future in space Nuclear Power In Space
EARTH OBSERVATION Arctic Ice On The Verge Of Another All-Time Low Changing The World, One Student At A Time GOCE To Look At The Earth Surface And Core Tropical Storm Fay's Center Now Moving Inland	TECH SPACE Eyes turn to dawn of 'visual computing' NPL To Create Encyclopedia For Space Nanomaterials Key Advance Toward Micro-Spacecraft MIT's Lincoln Lab Upgrades Sputnik-Era Antenna

The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright Space.TV Corporation. AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement, agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space.TV Corp on any Web page published or hosted by Space.TV Corp. Privacy Statement