Opportunity's Traverse from Landing Through Sol 413

As of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's 413th martian day, or sol, (March 23, 2005), the robot had driven a total of 4.62 kilometers (2.87 miles) since landing. The rover has been making rapid progress southward since it finished examining its jettisoned heat shield on sol 357 (Jan. 24, 2005, one year after landing). Scientists are eager for Opportunity to reach an area to the south called the "Etched Terrain," which appears mottled in the map's base images and might offer access to different layers of bedrock than what the rover has seen so far. This traverse map is overlaid on a mosaic of images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters and from Opportunity's descent camera. The scale bar at lower left is 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) long.