Friday, July 15, 2011

Opportunity less than a mile from the rim

It's hard to believe that the plucky robot is this close.

From NASA JPL:

Opportunity has exceeded 32 kilometers (nearly 20 miles) of distance on Mars and is now less than 1.5 kilometers (approximately a mile) from the first landfall on the rim of Endeavour crater.

On Sol 2649 (July 7, 2011), the rover drove over 141 meters (463 feet) to the southeast. Available energy permitted Opportunity to wake very early for an ultra-high frequency (UHF) relay pass to return extra data to Earth. On Sol 2651 (July 9, 2011), an atmospheric argon measurement was performed with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS). Also on that sol, a test of trying to warm the rover's electronics to mitigate clock drift was performed by keeping the rover awake longer. On the next sol, the rover drove over 150 meters (492 feet), continuing in the roughly southeast direction towards "Spirit Point" on the rim of Endeavour. Then on Sol 2654 (July 12, 2011), Opportunity drove 80 meters (262 feet) to the southeast, crossing the 32 kilometer (nearly 20-mile) odometry mark.

Ground is looking a little rockier:
























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