JPL: Mars Rover Sees Distant Crater Rims on Horizon

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JPL: Mars Rover Sees Distant Crater Rims on Horizon

Post by bystander » Sat May 01, 2010 3:57 pm

Mars Rover Sees Distant Crater Rims on Horizon
NASA JPL MER 2010-146 - 30 April 2010
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has captured a new view of the rim of Endeavour crater, the rover's destination in a multi-year traverse along the sandy Martian landscape. A portion of the rim about 13 kilometers (8 miles) away appears on the horizon at the left edge of the image, along with the rim of an even more distant crater, Iazu, on the right.

Endeavour is 21 kilometers (13 miles) in diameter, about 25 times wider than Victoria crater, the last major crater Opportunity visited. Opportunity began a marathon from Victoria to Endeavour in September 2008 after spending two years exploring Victoria.

See all related images: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features.cfm?feature=2585
Image
PIA13081: Endeavour on the Horizon (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University)

Planetary Society News: MER Update
The Mars Exploration Rovers' fourth Martian winter is proving to be the harshest one yet and Spirit and Opportunity are getting colder than ever before. With temperatures on the Red Planet dropping in April and the Martian winter solstice still two weeks away, the season has turned into a shivering nail-biter.

Spirit is ostensibly in hibernation, snoozing through the winter. In fact, yesterday the rover slept through its latest, greatest achievement, surpassing Viking Lander 1's record of 6 years and 116 days to become the longest-lived robot on Mars – provided of course that the rover is actually 'sleeping.'

In just three weeks, Opportunity will also surpass the decades-old Viking record and rove into the history books. But for this rover, this month was all about Endeavour and the breathtaking Pancam pictures it sent home. Those raw images, which the rover took with its panoramic camera, have been processed by the Pancam team at Cornell, as well as MER fans and artists around the world, into some of the mission's most glorious postcards, offering us in 'living Martian color' a spectacular view of the hills that rise up from the gigantic crater's rim. Late today, NASA/JPL released the version produced by Jim Bell and the Pancam team, which is posted below, along with several others.

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