New images help NASA to plot Mars Rover’s next move

Scientists have started plotting the next move for the Mars rover Opportunity, which has successfully reached the edge of Victoria Crater that is nearly 730 meters wide, and approximately eight times the size of Endurance.

Endurance is an impact crater on Mars that was visited by the Opportunity rover from May until December, 2004.

It took 21 months for six-wheel rover to reach at Victoria Crater, and it spent last week there taking pictures of the jagged crevasse with its cliffs of thickly layered rocks, which hold clues about the past of Martian, hypothetical native inhabitant of the planet Mars.

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), which is designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit and slipped into orbit last year, snapped the rover and its surroundings from above. The fresh aerial images photographed by the MRO gave scientists a bird's-eye view of the crater and evidence of erosion around the rim. In an exclusive image, the Opportunity rover appeared as a speck with its wheel tracks visible in the soil.

Overwhelmed with the results shown by the combined efforts of Mars missions in orbit and on the surface, Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program in Washington, said, "This is a tremendous example of how our Mars missions in orbit and on the surface are designed to reinforce each other and expand our ability to explore and discover," adding further that "You can only achieve this compelling level of exploration capability with the sustained exploration approach we are conducting at Mars through integrated orbiters and landers."

Scientists hope that by examining the close-ups of the rover's surroundings and aerial shots taken by the MRO, they would definitely be able to spot the safest route for the Opportunity to enter and explore the inner walls before it goes smash. "This vehicle could die at any minute. We have no guarantee that it's going to last," Opportunity rover’s principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University said.

Exposed geological layers in the cliff-like areas of Victoria's inner wall appear to record a longer span of Mars' environmental history as compared to its studies in smaller craters. These exposed rock layers guarantee to help probing whether the place could have been hospitable to life or not. According to the scientists, a prolegomenous analysis indicated distinct patterns in the sedimentary rock layers, suggesting the area experienced fluctuating climate.

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, both, though, unveiled geologic evidence of past water activity on the Mars since their landings two years ago, but it is not known yet whether water was ever there much enough to provide a habitat for life, as it did on Earth.

Rovers and the MRO, which is the most powerful spacecraft to circle Mars, are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.