[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Passes Half-Way Point to Next Destination

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2013 17:34:15 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201307030034.r630YFc2000855_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-212

Mars Rover Opportunity Passes Half-Way Point to Next Destination
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
July 02, 2013

Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status Report

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has driven
more than half of the distance needed to get from a site where it spent
22 months to its next destination.

The rover has less than half a mile (800 meters) to go to finish a
1.2-mile (2-kilometer) dash from one crater-rim segment, where it worked
since mid-2011, to another, where mission controllers intend to keep
Opportunity busy during the upcoming Martian winter.

Opportunity departed the southern tip of the "Cape York" segment six
weeks ago and headed south for "Solander Point." Both are raised
portions of the western rim of 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide)
Endeavour Crater, offering access to older geological deposits than the
rover visited during its first seven years on Mars. Opportunity was
launched from Florida on July 7, 2003, EDT (July 8, UTC). It landed on
Mars Jan. 24, 2004, PDT (Jan. 25, EDT and UTC).

A flatter area called Botany Bay separates Cape York from Solander Point.

"We are making very good progress crossing 'Botany Bay,'" said John
Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who is
project manager for the nearly decade-old mission.

The terrain is favorable for the trek.

"The surface that Opportunity is driving across in Botany Bay is
polygonally fractured outcrop that is remarkably good for driving," said
Brad Joliff, an Opportunity science team member and long-term planner at
Washington University in St. Louis. "The plates of outcrop, like a tiled
mosaic pavement, have a thin covering of soil, not enough to form the
wind-blown ripples we've had to deal with during some other long treks.
The outcrop plates are light-toned, and the cracks between them are
filled with dark, basaltic soil and our old friends the 'blueberries.'"

The BB-size spherules nicknamed "blueberries" are hematite-rich,
erosion-resistant concretions that Opportunity discovered at its landing
site and continued seeing on much of the ground between there and
Endeavour Crater.

The rise of Solander Point to the south gives the team a very visible
destination during the drive. That destination offers both a tall cross
section of rock layers for examination and also an expanse of terrain
that includes a north-facing slope, which is favorable for the
solar-powered rover to stay active and mobile through the coming Martian
southern-hemisphere winter.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate. For more about Spirit and Opportunity, visit
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can
follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at:
http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster at jpl.nasa.gov

2013-212
Received on Tue 02 Jul 2013 08:34:15 PM PDT