Great Endeavour: An artist's impression of the Mars rover Opportunity, which will make a seven-mile journey from one crater to another over the next two yearsFrom The Daily Mail:
The ageing but intrepid Mars rover Opportunity is set to embark on a two-year mission it may never complete - a seven-mile journey to a crater far bigger than one it has called home for two years, NASA have revealed.
The golf-cart-sized robot with a wobbly front wheel climbed out of Victoria crater earlier this month and scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California are steering the probe toward a crater more than 20 times larger, dubbed Endeavor.
But with the rover able to travel only 110 yards per day, the mission control team at JPL said it could take two years for Opportunity to reach its destination. There is no guarantee the vehicle will survive the trip.
Opportunity, like its twin rover Spirit, semi-idle for the moment on the opposite side of Mars, is well past its original three-month life expectancy.
The seven-mile stretch between Victoria and Endeavor craters matches the total distance the rover already has covered in the four-and-a-half years since landing on the planet.
Read more ....
No comments:
Post a Comment