Mars Curiosity Rover: MERS Robotic Arm Crushes Sledge Island for MSL Study

Opportunity is exploring 'Murray Ridge' on Solander Point, part of the rim of Endeavour Crater.

Investigation continued on 'Anchor Point,' Sol 3581 (Feb. 19, 2014) through Sol 3583 (Feb. 21, 2014), with Microscopic Imager (MI) and Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on two soil locations.

On Sol 3585 (Feb. 23, 2014), the arm crushed the rock 'Sledge Island' some more and then backed up to inspect the results.

Sledge Island was indeed crushed, and parts of it were in the Instrument Deployment Device (IDD) work volume.

The team generated a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic and placed the APXS on it Sol 3587 (Feb. 25, 2014).

The subsequent integration appears to have been successful. This should largely wrap-up the work at the current location, though the team will attempt to crack 'Stuart Island' under the wheel as the rover drives away.

As of Sol 3588 (Feb. 26, 2014), the solar array energy production was 464 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.498 and a solar array dust factor of 0.691.

Total odometry is 24.07 miles (38.74 kilometers).

NASA Mars orbiter HiRise Image: Opportunity Rover on Murray Ridge

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

A new image from a telescopic camera orbiting Mars shows NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity at work on "Murray Ridge," without any new impact craters nearby.

The Feb. 14 view from the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) is above.

Rover tracks from Opportunity, as well as the rover itself, are visible.

A rock, dubbed "Pinnacle Island," appeared in January 2014 next to Opportunity where it had been absent a few days earlier.

After that, researchers using HiRISE planned this observation to check the remote possibility that a fresh impact by an object from space might have excavated a crater near Opportunity and thrown this rock to its new location. No fresh impact site is seen in the image.

Meanwhile, observations by the rover solved the Pinnacle Island mystery by finding where the rock had been struck, broken and moved by a rover wheel.

Murray Ridge is part of the western rim of Endeavour Crater, an impact scar that is billions of years old and about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

NASA Mars Curiosity Rover: 'Murray Ridge' on Mars

This scene shows the "Murray Ridge" portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars.

The ridge is the NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's work area for the rover's sixth Martian winter.

The ridge rises about 130 feet (40 meters) above the surrounding plain, between "Solander Point" at the north end of the ridge and "Cape Tribulation," beyond Murray Ridge to the south.

This view does not show the entire ridge. The visible ridge line is about 10 meters (33 feet) above the rover's location when the component images were taken.

The scene sweeps from east to south. The planar rocks in the foreground at the base of the hill are part of a layer of rocks laid down around the margins of the crater rim.

At this location, Opportunity is sitting at the contact between the Meridiani Planum sandstone plains and the rocks of the Endeavour Crater rim.

On the upper left, the view is directed about 22 kilometers (14 miles) across the center of Endeavour crater to the eastern rim.

Panoramic camera

The scene combines several images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity during the 3,446th Martian day, or sol, of the mission's work on Mars (Oct. 3, 2013) and the following three sols.

On Sol 3451 (Oct. 8, 2013), Opportunity began climbing the ridge.

The slope offers outcrops that contain clay minerals detected from orbit and also gives the rover a northward tilt that provides a solar-energy advantage during the Martian southern hemisphere's autumn and winter.

The rover team chose to call this feature Murray Ridge in tribute to Bruce Murray (1931-2013), an influential advocate for planetary exploration who was a member of the science teams for NASA's earliest missions to Mars and later served as director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena.

This view is presented in approximately true colour, merging exposures taken through three of the Pancam's colour filters, centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet).

Image Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Cornell/ASU