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Opportunity Rover Driving Between ‘Lily Pads’ in Search of Martian Sun and Science
NASA’s Opportunity rover peers outwards across to the vast expense of Endeavour Crater from current location descending along steep walled Marathon Valley in early November 2015. Marathon Valley holds significant deposits of water altered clay minerals holding clues to the planets watery past. Shadow of Pancam Mast assembly and robots deck visible at right. This navcam camera photo mosaic was assembled from images taken on Sol 4181 (Oct. 28, 2015) and colorized. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/Marco Di Lorenzo
Just shy of an unfathomable 4200 Sols traversing ravishing alien terrain on the Red Planet, the longest living ‘Martian’ – NASA’s robot ‘Opportunity’ – is driving between “lily pads” down steep walled Marathon Valley in search of life giving sun that enables spectacular science yielding clues to Mars watery past. All this as she strives to survive utterly harsh climate extremes, because ‘winter is coming’ for her seventh time on the fourth rock from the sun!
“Opportunity is driving east and southeast down Marathon Valley, bisecting the region in which we detect smectites [clay minerals] using CRISM [spectrometer] data,” Opportunity Deputy Principal Investigator Ray Arvidson, of Washington University in St. Louis, told Universe Today.
The ancient, weathered slopes around Marathon Valley became a top (…)
Read the rest of Opportunity Rover Driving Between ‘Lily Pads’ in Search of Martian Sun and Science (1,305 words)
© Ken Kremer for Universe Today, 2015. | Permalink | No comment |
Post tags: Curiosity Rover, Endeavour crater, Marathon on Mars, marathon valley, Mars, mars red planet, Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity Rover, Martian winter, NASA, Opportunity Rover, phyllosilicates, Ray Arvidson, red planet
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/123324/opportunity-rover-driving-between-lily-pads-in-search-of-martian-sun-and-science/
