[meteorite-list] NASA's Mars Rover To Head Toward Bigger Crater

[Ron Baalke]

Sept. 22, 2008

Dwayne Brown       
Headquarters, Washington                            
202-358-1726 
dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov 

Guy Webster 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 
818-354-6278 
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov  
RELEASE: 08-240

NASA'S MARS ROVER TO HEAD TOWARD BIGGER CRATER

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its 
sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the 
past two years. 

To reach the crater the rover team calls Endeavour, Opportunity would 
need to drive approximately 7 miles to the southeast, matching the 
total distance it has traveled since landing on Mars in early 2004. 
The rover climbed out of Victoria Crater earlier this month. 

"We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to 
go anyway," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal 
investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin 
rover, Spirit. "This crater is staggeringly large compared to 
anything we've seen before." 

Getting there would yield a look inside a bowl 13.7 miles across. 
Scientists expect to see a much deeper stack of rock layers than 
those examined by Opportunity in Victoria Crater. 

"I would love to see that view from the rim," Squyres said. "But even 
if we never get there, as we move southward we expect to be getting 
to younger and younger layers of rock on the surface. Also, there are 
large craters to the south that we think are sources of cobbles that 
we want to examine out on the plain. Some of the cobbles are samples 
of layers deeper than Opportunity will ever see, and we expect to 
find more cobbles as we head toward the south." 

Opportunity will have to pick up the pace to get there. The rover team 
estimates Opportunity may be able to travel about 110 yards each day 
it is driven toward the Endeavour crater. Even at that pace, the 
journey could take two years. 

"This is a bolder, more aggressive objective than we have had before," 
said John Callas, the project manager for both Mars rovers at NASA's 
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's tremendously 
exciting. It's new science. It's the next great challenge for these 
robotic explorers." 

Opportunity, like Spirit, is well past its expected lifetime on Mars, 
and might not keep working long enough to reach the crater. However, 
two new resources not available during the 4-mile drive toward 
Victoria Crater in 2005 and 2006 are expected to aid in this new 
trek. 

One is imaging from orbit of details smaller than the rover itself, 
using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera 
on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which arrived at the Red 
Planet in 2006. 

"HiRISE allows us to identify drive paths and potential hazards on the 
scale of the rover along the route," Callas said. "This is a great 
example of how different parts of NASA's Mars Exploration Program 
reinforce each other." 

Other advantages come from a new version of flight software uplinked 
to Opportunity and Spirit in 2006, boosting their ability to 
autonomously choose routes and avoid hazards such as sand dunes. 

During its first year on Mars, Opportunity found geological evidence 
that the area where it landed had surface and underground water in 
the distant past. The rover's explorations since have added 
information about how that environment changed over time. Finding 
rock layers above or below the layers already examined adds windows 
into later or earlier periods of time. 

NASA's JPL built and manage the rovers and the Mars Reconnaissance 
Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. 

For images and information about Spirit and Opportunity, visit: 

http://www.nasa.gov/rovers   

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