Greeley Panorama
Image date: 5 July 2012
Image courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State University
This full-circle, false color scene combines 817 images — taken between the 2,811th Martian day, or sol, of the rover’s
Mars surface mission (Dec. 21, 2011) and Sol 2,947 (May 8, 2012) — by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on
NASA’s
Mars
Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows the terrain that surrounded the rover while it was stationary
for four months of work during its most recent Martian winter.
Opportunity spent those months on a northward sloped outcrop, "Greeley Haven," which angled the rover’s solar panels toward the sun low in the northern sky during southern hemisphere winter. The outcrop’s informal name is a tribute to Ronald Greeley (1939-2011), who was a member of the mission team and who taught generations of planetary scientists at Arizona State University, Tempe. The site is near the northern tip of the "Cape York" segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater.
Opportunity’s tracks can be seen extending from the south, with a turn-in-place and other maneuvers evident from activities to position the rover at Greeley Haven. The tracks in some locations have exposed darker underlying soils by disturbing a thin, bright dust cover.
Opportunity’s solar panels and other structures show dust that has accumulated over the lifetime of the mission. Opportunity has been working on Mars since January 2004.
During the recent four months that Opportunity worked at Greeley Haven, activities included radio-science observations to better understand Martian spin axis dynamics and thus interior structure, investigations of the composition and textures of an outcrop exposing an impact-jumbled rock formation on the crater rim, monitoring the atmosphere and surface for changes, and acquisition of this full-color mosaic of the surroundings.
Opportunity spent those months on a northward sloped outcrop, "Greeley Haven," which angled the rover’s solar panels toward the sun low in the northern sky during southern hemisphere winter. The outcrop’s informal name is a tribute to Ronald Greeley (1939-2011), who was a member of the mission team and who taught generations of planetary scientists at Arizona State University, Tempe. The site is near the northern tip of the "Cape York" segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater.
Opportunity’s tracks can be seen extending from the south, with a turn-in-place and other maneuvers evident from activities to position the rover at Greeley Haven. The tracks in some locations have exposed darker underlying soils by disturbing a thin, bright dust cover.
Opportunity’s solar panels and other structures show dust that has accumulated over the lifetime of the mission. Opportunity has been working on Mars since January 2004.
During the recent four months that Opportunity worked at Greeley Haven, activities included radio-science observations to better understand Martian spin axis dynamics and thus interior structure, investigations of the composition and textures of an outcrop exposing an impact-jumbled rock formation on the crater rim, monitoring the atmosphere and surface for changes, and acquisition of this full-color mosaic of the surroundings.