NASA Rover Takes Pictures of Mars Crater

NASA’s Opportunity rover has embarked on a “scoot and shoot” on Mars, driving counterclockwise around the rocky inner perimeter of a crater while photographing it in detail.

Scientists likened Opportunity’s landing to a hole-in-one in golf: The air bag-cushioned rover bounced and rolled across the martian surface right into a small crater.

Since landing, Opportunity has been studying exposed rock within the crater that’s in reach of its robotic geologic instruments.

Microscopic images of the rock show its fine layers hold numerous spherical granules, “embedded in it like blueberries in a muffin,” Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres said.

The sulfur-rich rock, probably volcanic ash or compacted, windblown dust, sheds the relatively harder granules as the outcrop erodes, said Squyres, the mission’s main scientist.

“This is wild-looking stuff,” Squyres said.

The granules likely formed either when molten rock, spewed skyward in a volcanic eruption or following a meteor impact, cooled and solidified or when minerals, carried by ground water, slowly built up to form rounded features within the surrounding rock.

Opportunity also peeked over the rim of its crater to see the protective backshell and parachute the spacecraft discarded just before hitting the flat, gray surface of Mars, scientists said. The landing region is relatively free of the iron-rich dust that stains most of the Red Planet a rusty red color.

A color photograph from Opportunity, released at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, showed the two objects distinctly, on a largely featureless surface.

“There is the hardware that we’ve littered the surface with,” said Michael Malin, a member of the mission science team.

The photograph helped confirm exactly where Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 24.

Images taken from Mars Global Surveyor, a NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars, nailed the location. The orbital pictures show Opportunity’s lander, visible as a white dot, in the center of the 72-foot-wide crater, Malin said.

NASA planned for Global Surveyor to begin looking for another martian spacecraft, Britain’s ill-fated Beagle 2 lander, on Thursday.

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, are exploring opposite sides of the Red Planet on an $820 million mission to look for geologic evidence that Mars was once a wetter place that might have been hospitable to life.

Both rovers are on the move this week. Each has covered more than 40 feet so far.

“The race is on,” JPL mobility software engineer Mark Maimone said.

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On the Net:

Rover Mission: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov