[meteorite-list] NASA Rover Inspects Next Rock at Endeavour

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-289  

NASA Rover Inspects Next Rock at Endeavour
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
September 14, 2011

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is using instruments on its
robotic arm to inspect targets on a rock called "Chester Lake."

This is the second rock the rover has examined with a microscopic imager
and a spectrometer since reaching its long-term destination, the rim of
vast Endeavour crater, in August. Unlike the first rock, which was a
boulder tossed by excavation of a small crater on Endeavour's rim,
Chester Lake is an outcrop of bedrock.

The rocks at Endeavour apparently come from an earlier period of Martian
history than the rocks that Opportunity examined during its first
seven-and-a-half years on Mars.  More information about the ongoing
exploration of Endeavour's rim is at:
http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/22660.aspx .

Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month
prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of
bonus, extended missions. Both have made important discoveries about wet
environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting
microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010.  NASA will launch
the next-generation Mars rover, car-size Curiosity, this autumn for
arrival at Mars' Gale crater in August 2012.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project
for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More information
about the rovers is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov  and on Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/marsrovers .

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

2011-289