Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Having reached its highest point in 40 months of exploring the western rim of Endeavour Crater, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity paused Thursday to capture a stunning image of the panoramic vista from atop the region known as Cape Tribulation.
Opportunity has spent more than a decade on the surface of the Red Planet, travelling over 25.8 miles since it first landed on January 25, 2004. While it has been having some issues with a part of its flash memory, the rover recovered enough to scale to an elevation of about 440 feet.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the rover has been operating without using its flash memory while engineers work on a software fix for the issue. Opportunity completed drives on January 5 and 6 without use of its flash memory, and those journeys brought the veteran rover the final 174 feet southeast towards the crest.
Cape Tribulation, the US space agency explained, is a reference to one of the locations visited by James Cook and the HMS Endeavour during his first voyage to Australia and New Zealand from 1769 through 1771. From this location, it will proceed southward along the crater rim to an area known as “Marathon Valley,” where water-related minerals have been detected from orbit.
Marathon Valley, NASA explained, was named from calculations that Opportunity will have travelled distance equal to a marathon race (26.2 miles) by the time it reaches that location. Its current odometry is 25.86 miles, and it is less than half a mile away.
However, as Discovery News points out, before it sets off for Marathon Valley, the flash memory issue must first be dealt with. Currently, data needs to be uploaded each night before Opportunity enters sleep mode during Mars night. The rover team is currently testing a software fix that would work around the damaged part and allow the rest of the flash memory to be used.
“The fix for the flash memory requires a change to the rover’s flight software, so we are conducting extensive testing to be sure it will not lead to any unintended consequences for rover operations,” JPL’s John Callas, project manager for Opportunity, explained in a statement.
Marathon Valley contains a variety of clay minerals dating back to a time when the Red Planet was hope to pH-neutral surface water. The geological features there could provide scientists with vital clue to the potential for the existence of life on ancient Mars.
Earlier this week, a researcher from Old Dominion University explained that rock formations pictured in images captured by NASA’s other rover, Curiosity, may contain evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars. That hypothesis was based on the similarities between ancient sedimentary rocks on the Red Planet and structures on Earth that has been shaped by microbes.
The pictures, which were taken by Curiosity as it drove through the Gillespie Lake outcrop in a dry lakebed known as Yellowknife Bay, belong to a group of microbial structures formed by the interaction of ground-based microbes with erosion in sand and other clastic deposits, study author and ODU associate professor Dr. Nora Noffke explained.
Opportunity, this one goes out to you:
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