Annotated version
The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has chosen
southeast as the direction for the rover's next extended journey, toward a
crater more than 20 times wider than "Victoria Crater." Opportunity exited
Victoria Crater on Aug. 28, 2008, after nearly a year investigating the
interior.
The crater to the southeast is about 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) in
diameter and about 300 meters (1,000 feet) deep, exposing a much thicker
stack of rock layers than those examined in Victoria Crater.
The rover team informally calls the bigger crater "Endeavour" and
emphasizes that Opportunity may well never reach it. The rover has already
operated more than 18 times longer than originally planned, and the
distance to the big crater, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) matches the
total distance Opportunity has driven since landing in early 2004. Driving
southeastward is expected to take Opportunity to exposures of younger rock
layers than is has previously seen and to provide access to rocks on the
plain that were thrown long distances by impacts that excavated even
deeper, more distant craters.
The crater that Opportunity will drive toward dominates this orbital view
from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA's Mars
Odyssey orbiter. The much smaller Victoria Crater is the most prominent
circle near the upper left corner of the image. This view is a mosaic of
about 50 separate visible-light images taken by THEMIS.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Odyssey and Mars
Exploration Rover missions for the NASA Science Mission Directorate,
Washington, D.C. THEMIS was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe,
in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS
investigation is led by Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin
Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and
developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly
from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena.
