NASA’s Mars Rover Opportunity reaches destination, starts studying the valley’s origin
Opportunity, NASA’s senior Mars rover, has reached its main destination on the Red Planet – the “Perseverance Valley,” an ancient fluid-carved valley incised on the inner slope of a vast crater’s rim.
As part of its current two-year extended mission, the rover will look at the process that carved the valley into billions of years ago. Studying the evidence, scientists will determine of it was carved by flowing water, a debris flow or wind erosion.
“The science team is really jazzed at starting to see this area up close and looking for clues to help us distinguish among multiple hypotheses about how the valley formed,” Opportunity Project Scientist Matt Golombek of NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, said.
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According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the rover team’s plan for investigating the area begins with taking sets of images of the valley from two widely separated points at that dip in the rim. This long-baseline stereo imaging will provide information for extraordinarily detailed three-dimensional analysis of the terrain. The valley extends down from the rim’s crest line into the crater, at a slope of about 15 to 17 degrees for a distance of about two football fields.
Reversing course back uphill when partway down could be difficult, so finding a path with minimum obstacles will be important for driving Opportunity through the whole valley. Researchers intend to use the rover to examine textures and compositions at the top, throughout the length and at the bottom, as part of investigating the valley’s history.
While the stereo imaging is being analysed for drive-planning, the team plans to use the rover to examine the area immediately west of the crater rim at the top of the valley.
For nearly half of the mission – 69 months – Opportunity has been exploring sites on and near the western rim of Endeavour Crater, where even older rocks are exposed. The crater spans about 14 miles (22 kilometres) in diameter. Opportunity arrived from the north-west at a point corresponding to about the 10 o’clock position on the circle if north is noon; Perseverance Valley slices west to east at approximately the 8 o’clock position.
Opportunity hustled southward to reach the crown of the valley in recent weeks. In mid-April, it finished about two-and-a-half years on a rim segment called “Cape Tribulation.”
In seven drives between then and arriving at the destination on May 4, it covered 377 yards (345 meters), bringing the mission’s total odometry to about 27.8 miles (44.7 kilometres).
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