NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity views comet C/2013 A1 near Mars

Researchers used the Pancam on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to capture this view of comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring as it flew near Mars on Oct. 19, 2014.

Credit: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Cornell Univ. /ASU /TAMU

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity captured images of a comet passing much closer to Mars than any previous known comet flyby of Earth or Mars.

The images of comet Siding Spring were taken against a backdrop of the pre-dawn Martian sky on Sunday (Oct. 19).

Images of comet A1 Siding Spring from the rover's panoramic camera (Pancam) are available online.

Researchers used Opportunity's Pancam to image at a range of exposure times about two-and-one-half hours before the closest approach of the nucleus of comet Siding Spring to Mars.

By the time of closest approach at about 87,000 miles (139,500 kilometers), dawn had lit the sky above Opportunity.

"It's excitingly fortunate that this comet came so close to Mars to give us a chance to study it with the instruments we're using to study Mars," said Opportunity science team member Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, who coordinated the camera pointing.

"The views from Mars rovers, in particular, give us a human perspective, because they are about as sensitive to light as our eyes would be."

Three NASA Mars orbiters, two Mars rovers and other assets on Earth and in space are studying comet Siding Spring.

This comet is making its first visit this close to the sun from the outer solar system's Oort Cloud, so the concerted campaign of observations may yield fresh clues to our solar system's earliest days more than 4 billion years ago.

Opportunity has been roving on Mars since January 2004 and has provided evidence about the Red Planet's ancient wet environments.

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity: On West Rim Endeavour heading for Ulysses crater

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater heading towards "Marathon Valley," a putative location for abundant clay minerals.

The rover is headed to a near-term target, a small crater named "Ulysses."

The rover is moving closer to Ulysses to get a peek inside.

Ulysses Crater

On Sol 3787 (Sept. 18, 2014), Opportunity drove a little over 44 feet (13.5 meters) in rocky terrain, requiring the use of Visual Odometry to safely navigate.

On Sol 3789 (Sept. 20, 2014), the rover moved closer to the rim of Ulysses, but the drive stopped after 15 feet (4.6 meters) because Visual Odometry was not tracking on the last steps.

An evening Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) measurement of atmospheric argon was performed on Sol 3790 (Sept. 21, 2014).

The rover continued closer to Ulysses on the next sol with a 13-feet (4-meter) bump.

High slip prevented the rover from completing the turn for communication at the end of the drive.

Recently, there were more Flash-related events. Two more "amnesia" events occurred on the evenings of Sols 3786 and 3789 (Sept. 17 and Sept. 20, 2014). And two Flash write errors to Bank 7 occurred on Sols 3791 and 3792 (Sept. 22 and Sept. 23, 2014).

All these events were benign and did not impact the rover's operation. The project continues to investigate. Otherwise, Opportunity continues in good health.

As of Sol 3792 (Sept. 23, 2014), the solar array energy production was 639 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.889 and a solar array dust factor of 0.740.

Total odometry is 25.34 (40.77 kilometers).

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Flash-Memory Reformat Underway

Opportunity is on the west rim of Endeavour Crater heading towards 'Marathon Valley,' a putative location for abundant clay minerals. 

The project is taking steps to reformat the rover's Flash file system to correct the recurring reset problem.

On Sols 3767 and 3768 (Aug. 29 and 30, 2014), the project sent special commands to put the rover into a mode that does not use the Flash file system.

This was successful and the rover performed without any errors for those two sols.

A diagnostic check of the flight software portion of Flash was also performed. For Sols 3769, 3770 and 3771 (Aug. 31, Sept. 1 and Sept. 2, 2014), the rover was operated back in its normal mode using the Flash files system.

The rover remained under master sequence control for all three sols without any Flash-induced resets.

On Sol 3772 (Sept. 3, 2014), the project began the process of copying a subset of necessary files from the Flash files system over to EEPROM (other non-volatile storage) for safe keeping during the reformat process.

The plan ahead is to perform the reformat of the Flash files system, then restore the necessary files to Flash. At that point, the rover should be back into normal operation.

As of Sol 3771 (Sept. 2, 2014), the solar array energy production was 713 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.852 and a solar array dust factor of 0.771.

Total odometry is 25.28 miles (40.69 kilometers).

Mars rover Opportunity's vista includes long tracks - Video

This scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity looks back toward part of the west rim of Endeavour Crater that the rover drove along, heading southward, during the summer of 2014. 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

From a ridgeline viewpoint, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recently recorded a scene looking back over its own tracks made from nearly half a mile (more than 700 meters) of southbound driving.

Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) recorded the component images on Aug. 15, 2014, from an elevated portion of the west rim of Endeavour Crater.

A brief video places the scene into context with the rover's entire driving route of more than 25 miles (40 kilometers) since the mission's 2004 landing in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars.

The Opportunity mission has been investigating outcrops on the western rim of Endeavour Crater for three years.

The crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. During Opportunity's first decade on Mars and the 2004-to-2010 career of its twin, Spirit, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project yielded a range of findings proving wet environmental conditions on ancient Mars, some very acidic, others milder and more conducive to supporting life.



Overhead and on-the-ground views of the 25-mile journey NASA's Opportunity Mars rover has made since landing in 2004

Mars Rover Opportunity: Aluminum-Bearing Site on Mars

With its solar panels their cleanest in years, NASA's decade-old Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is inspecting a section of crater-rim ridgeline chosen as a priority target due to evidence of a water-related mineral.

Orbital observations of the site by another NASA spacecraft, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, found a spectrum with the signature of aluminum bound to oxygen and hydrogen.

Researchers regard that signature as a marker for a mineral called montmorillonite, which is in a class of clay minerals called smectites.

Montmorillonite forms when basalt is altered under wet and slightly acidic conditions. The exposure of it extends about 800 feet (about 240 meters) north to south on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, as mapped by the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM).

"It's like a mineral beacon visible from orbit saying, 'Come check this out,'" said Opportunity Principal Investigator Steve Squyres, of Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Some of the most important findings from Opportunity's long mission came from combining CRISM and rover observations of a site about 2 miles (3 kilometers) farther north on the crater's western rim.

Rocks exposed there contain evidence for an iron-bearing smectite - called nontronite, as well as for montmorillonite.

That site yielded evidence for an ancient environment with water that would have been well-suited for use by microbes, if Mars had any billions of years ago.

Evidence that Opportunity may add about the geological context for different smectites could boost understanding about diversity and changes in ancient wet environments on Mars.

Opportunity reached the northern end of the montmorillonite-bearing exposure last month, at a high spot called "Pillinger Point." Opportunity's international science team chose that informal name in honor of Colin Pillinger (1943-2014).

Pillinger was the British principal investigator for the Beagle 2 project, which attempted to set a research lander on Mars a few weeks before Opportunity's January 2004 landing.

"Colin and his team were trying to get to Mars at the same time that we were, and in some ways they faced even greater challenges than we did," Squyres said.

"Our team has always had enormous respect for the energy and enthusiasm with which Colin Pillinger undertook the Beagle 2 mission. He will be missed."

Though selected as a science destination, Pillinger Point also offers a scenic vista from atop the western rim of Endeavour Crater, which is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

A color view of Pillinger Point from the rover's panoramic camera (Pancam) is available here

Initial measurements at this site with the element-identifying alpha particle X-ray spectrometer at the end of Opportunity's arm indicate that bright-toned veins in the rock contain calcium sulfate.

Scientists deduce this mineral was deposited as water moved through fractures on Endeavour's rim. The rover earlier found veins of calcium sulfate farther north along the rim.

As Opportunity investigates this site and sites farther south along the rim, the rover has more energy than usual.

"The solar panels have not been this clean since the first year of the mission," said Opportunity Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.

"It's amazing, when you consider that accumulation of dust on the solar panels was originally expected to cause the end of the mission in less than a year."

"Now it's as if we'd been a ship out at sea for 10 years and just picked up new provisions at a port of call, topping off our supplies."

Both Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, benefited from sporadic dust-cleaning events in past years. However, on the ridge that Opportunity has been navigating since late 2013, winds have removed dust more steadily, day by day, than either rover has experienced elsewhere.

"It's easy to forget that Opportunity is in the middle of a Martian winter right now," said JPL's Jennifer Herman, power-subsystem engineer.

"Because of the clean solar arrays, clear skies and favorable tilt, there is more energy for operations now than there was any time during the previous three Martian summers. Opportunity is now able to pull scientific all-nighters for three nights in a row, something she hasn't had the energy to do in years."

The rover's signs of aging, including a stiff shoulder joint and occasional amnesia events, have not grown more troublesome in the past year, and no new symptoms have appeared.

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity looks out from 'Pillinger' Point

Opportunity Mars rover peers into vast Endeavour Crater from Pillinger Point mountain ridge named in honor of Colin Pillinger, the Principal Investigator for the British Beagle 2 lander built to search for life on Mars. 

Pillinger passed away from a brain hemorrhage on May 7, 2014. 

This navcam camera photo mosaic was assembled from images taken on June 5, 2014 (Sol 3684) and colorized. 

Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Marco Di Lorenzo

NASA's decade old Opportunity rover has reached a long sought after region of aluminum-rich clay mineral outcrops at a new Endeavour crater ridge now "named 'Pillinger Point' after Colin Pillinger the Principal Investigator for the Beagle 2 Mars lander", Prof. Ray Arvidson, Deputy Principal Investigator for the rover.

The Beagle 2 lander was a low-quality project, hurriedly built with an impoverished budget, by a lack-lustre English government with preposterous aspirations, no financial backing and /or scientific knowledge at a political level.
The Beagle 2 was intended to search for microscopic signs of life on Mars.

The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) team named the noteworthy ridge in honour of Prof. Colin Pillinger, a British planetary scientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, who passed away at the age of 70 on May 7, 2014.

'Pillinger Point' is a scientifically bountiful place possessing both clay mineral outcrops and mineral veins where "waters came up through the cracks", Arvidson explained to me.

Since water is a prerequisite for life as we know it, this is a truly fitting tribute to name Opportunity's current exploration site 'Pillinger Point' after Prof. Pillinger.

The new photo mosaic above captured by Opportunity peering out from 'Pillinger Point' ridge on June 5, 2014 (Sol 3684) shows a panoramic view around the eroded mountain ridge and into vast Endeavour crater.

The gigantic crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

Traverse Map for NASA’s Opportunity rover from 2004 to 2014 – A Decade on Mars 

This map shows the entire path the rover has driven during a decade on Mars and over 3692 Sols, or Martian days, since landing inside Eagle Crater on Jan 24, 2004 to current location along Pillinger Point ridge south of Solander Point summit at the western rim of Endeavour Crater and heading to clay minerals at Cape Tribulation. 

Opportunity discovered clay minerals at Esperance – indicative of a habitable zone. 

Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/ASU/Marco Di Lorenzo/Ken Kremer

NASA Rover Opportunity 10 Year traverse map shows the location of Pillinger Point along the segmented rim of Endeavour crater.

Pillinger Point is situated south of Solander Point and Murray Ridge along the western rim of Endeavour in a region with caches of clay minerals indicative of an ancient Martian habitable zone.

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity's selfie shows clean machine

A self-portrait of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity taken in late March 2014 (right) shows that much of the dust on the rover's solar arrays has been removed since a similar portrait from January 2014 (left). 

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

In its sixth Martian winter, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity now has cleaner solar arrays than in any Martian winter since its first on the Red Planet, in 2005.

Cleaning effects of wind events in March boosted the amount of electricity available for the rover's work.

A new self-portrait from Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam), showing the cleaned arrays, is pictured here.

The mission is using the rover's added energy to inspect "Murray Ridge," on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, to learn about wet environments on ancient Mars.

During Opportunity's first decade on Mars and the 2004-2010 career of its twin, Spirit, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project yielded a range of findings proving wet environmental conditions on ancient Mars—some very acidic, others milder and more conducive to supporting life.

Mars Rover Opportunity Reaches Campsite for Martian Winter

NASA's Opportunity Mars rover used its navigation camera to record this image of the northern end of "Solander Point," a raised section of the western rim of Endeavour Crater, on Aug. 8, 2013.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover has reached the site where it will wait out its sixth Red Planet winter.

Opportunity — which touched down on Mars in January 2004 just after its twin, Spirit, arrived on the planet — is studying rocks at the foot of a location called Solander Point, whose north-facing slope will allow the robot to tilt its solar panels toward the sun during the coming southern Martian winter.

"We made it," Opportunity project scientist Matt Golombek, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "The drives went well, and Opportunity is right next to Solander Point."

"We know we could be on that north-facing slope with a one-day drive, but we don't need to go there yet. We have time to investigate the contact between the two geological units around the base of Solander Point."



One of those two units preserves evidence of long-ago contact with acidic water, while the other one is older and may contain minerals that formed in more neutral and benign liquid water, researchers said.

The Opportunity rover arrived at the base of Solander Point in the first few days of August, after a three-month, 1.5-mile (2.4 kilometers) journey from a spot called Cape York.

Both Solander Point and Cape York sit along the rim of the 14-mile-wide (22 km) Endeavour Crater, which Opportunity reached in August 2011.

The days are getting shorter in Mars' southern hemisphere, and the amount of sunlight available to the solar-powered Opportunity will reach a minimum in mid-February 2014 (the southern winter solstice occurs on Feb. 14).

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity: Rover finishes walkabout on crater rim

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity during a reconnaissance circuit around an area of interest called "Matijevic Hill" on the rim of a large crater.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

The latest work assignment for NASA's long-lived Mars rover Opportunity is a further examination of an area where the robot just completed a walkabout.

"If you are a geologist studying a site like this, one of the first things you do is walk the outcrop, and that's what we've done with Opportunity," said Steve Squyres, the mission's principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Coming up on its ninth anniversary, Opportunity still is a capable robotic explorer. It has been investigating a crater-rim site where observations from orbiting Mars spacecraft detected traces of clay minerals, which form under wet, non-acidic conditions that can be favorable for life.

The rover's current activities were presented at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. The rover team chose this site as a driving destination years earlier.

The site is named Matijevic Hill in honour of the late Jacob Matijevic, who led the engineering team for the twin Mars exploration rovers Spirit and Opportunity for several years.

Opportunity drove about 1,160 feet (354 meters) in a counterclockwise circuit around Matijevic Hill in October and November, bringing the total miles driven on the mission to 22 miles (35.4 kilometers).

Researchers used the rover to survey the extent of Matijevic Hill outcrops and identify the best places to investigate further. "We've got a list of questions posed by the observations so far," Squyres said.

"We did this walkabout to determine the most efficient use of time to answer the questions. Now we have a good idea what we're dealing with, and we're ready to start the detailed work."

The hill is on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, a bowl 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. An impact from a celestial object dug this crater more than 3 billion years ago, pushing rocks onto the rim from a greater depth than Opportunity reached during its first several years on Mars.

Since the impact, those rocks may have been altered by environmental conditions. Sorting out the relative ages of local outcrops is a key to understanding the area's environmental history.

"Almost nine years into a mission planned to last for three months, Opportunity is fit and ready for driving, robotic-arm operations and communication with Earth," said the mission's deputy project scientist, Diana Blaney, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Two outcrops of high interest on Matijevic Hill are "Whitewater Lake" and "Kirkwood." Whitewater Lake is light-toned material that science team members believe may contain clay.

Kirkwood contains small spheres with composition, structure and distribution that differ from other iron-rich spherules, nicknamed blueberries, that Opportunity found at its landing site and throughout the Meridiani Planum area it has explored. Squyres calls the Kirkwood spheres "newberries."

"We don't know yet whether Whitewood Lake and Kirkwood are from before or after the crater formed," he said.

"One of the most important things to work out is the order and position of the rock layers to tell us the relative ages. We also need more work on the composition of Whitewater and debris shed by Whitewater to understand the clay signature seen from orbit, and on the composition of the newberries to understand how they formed."

NASA MARS Rover Opportunity: Strange Mystery Spheres on Mars Baffle Scientists

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./ USGS/Modesto Junior College

CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./ USGS/Modesto Junior College

A strange picture of odd, spherical rock formations on Mars from NASA's Opportunity rover has scientists scratching their heads over what exactly they're looking at.

The new Mars photo by Opportunity shows a close-up of a rock outcrop called Kirkwood covered in blister-like bumps that mission scientists can't yet explain.

At first blush, the formations appear similar to so-called Martian "blueberries" — iron-rich spherical formations first seen by Opportunity in 2004 — but they actually differ in several key ways, scientist said.

"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," said rover mission principal investigator Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., in a statement.

"Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."

The new photo by Opportunity is actually a mosaic of four images taken by a microscope-like imager on its robotic arm, and then stitched together like puzzle pieces by scientists on Earth.

Rock fins up to about 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall dominate this scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. 

This image was taken Aug. 23, 2012.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.

NASA HiRise Image: Older sibling sees Curiosity take the plunge

(Images: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Thousands of humans weren't the only ones with eyes trained on NASA's newest Mars rover last night: One of the robot's orbiting relatives captured this lucky shot as Curiosity descended onto the Red Planet.

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was in position to observe Curiosity as it plunged through the Martian atmosphere during its harrowing Entry, Descent and Landing phase, also called the "7 minutes of terror".

Seen about a minute before touchdown, Curiosity is still tucked into its backshell, part of the larger spacecraft that encased the rover during its roughly eight-month trek from Earth to Mars.

The craft is attached to its 16-metre-wide supersonic parachute, which slowed Curiosity's descent speed from 400 metres per second to 80 metres per second in less than two minutes.

A closer cutout view of the spacecraft and its chute (above left) was processed to avoid saturation, presenting better detail.

Shortly after this picture was taken, Curiosity let go of the backshell and fired up its retrorockets, beginning a powered descent that would end in the innovative but risky Sky Crane manoevre, with the rover being lowered on cables to land wheels first near a Martian mountain.

This isn't the first time HiRISE has watched over a new arrival on Mars. In May 2008 the orbiting camera spied NASA's Phoenix lander parachuting toward the Red Planet's north polar region.

The angle of that shot made it seem as if Phoenix was headed into a large crater, although it actually touched down on smooth plains about 20 kilometres from the crater rim.

HiRISE has also taken portraits of its predecessors, including the defunct rover Spirit and its still-operational twin, Opportunity.

"Guess you could consider us the closest thing to paparazzi on Mars," HiRISE team member Sarah Milkovich, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a NASA statement.

Still, getting a bead on Curiosity during its descent was not guaranteed. The HiRISE team had just one chance to get an image as Curiosity passed through the orbiter's field of view.

"If HiRISE took the image one second before or one second after, we probably would be looking at an empty Martian landscape," says Milkovich.

NASA MARS Rover Opportunity: Greeley Haven Panorama Image

The so-called Greeley Panorama was produced by combining 817 photographs NASA was able to capture via the panoramic camera, or Pancam, on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between Dec. 21 and May 8.

Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ Arizona State University 

NASA released this week a stunning image produced by combining 817 photographs it was able to capture via the panoramic camera, or Pancam, on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between Dec. 21 and May 8.

North is at the center of the so-called Greeley Panorama image, and south is at both ends, according to NASA.

"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," NASA reported.

"The panorama combines exposures taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet)." NASA said. "The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see."

Opportunity has been working on Mars since January 2004.

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity's Selfie

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity catches its own late-afternoon shadow in this dramatically lit view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars.

The rover used the panoramic camera (Pancam) between about 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. local Mars time to record images taken through different filters and combined into this mosaic view.

Most of the component images were recorded during the 2,888th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars (March 9, 2012).

At that time, Opportunity was spending low-solar-energy weeks of the Martian winter at the Greeley Haven outcrop on the Cape York segment of Endeavour's western rim.

To give the mosaic a rectangular aspect, some small parts of the edges of the mosaic and sky were filled in with parts of an image acquired earlier as part of a 360-degree panorama from the same location.

Opportunity has been studying the western rim of Endeavour Crater since arriving there in August 2011. This crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter, or about the same area as the city of Seattle.

This is more than 20 times wider than Victoria Crater, the largest impact crater that Opportunity had previously examined. The interior basin of Endeavour is in the upper half of this view.

The mosaic combines about a dozen images taken through Pancam filters centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet).

The view is presented in false color to make some differences between materials easier to see, such as the dark sandy ripples and dunes on the crater's distant floor.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

NASA MARS: Dusty Rover Opprtunity's Self Portrait

This self portrait from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows dust accumulation on the rover's solar panels as the mission approached its fifth Martian winter.

The dust reduces the rover's power supply, and the rover's mobility is limited until the winter is over or wind cleans the panels.

This is a mosaic of images taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) during the 2,111th to 2,814th Martian days, or sols, of the rover's mission (Dec. 21 to Dec. 24, 2011).

The downward-looking view omits the mast on which the camera is mounted.

The portrait is presented in approximate true colour, the camera team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it with their own eyes.

Opportunity has worked through four Martian southern hemisphere winters since it landed in in January 2004 about 14 miles (23 kilometers) northwest of its current location.

Closer to the equator than its twin rover, Spirit, Opportunity has not needed to stay on a sun-facing slope during the previous winters.

Now, however, Opportunity's solar panels carry a thicker coating of dust, and the team is using a strategy employed for three winters with Spirit: staying on a sun-facing slope.

The sun will pass relatively low in the northern sky from the rover's perspective for several months of shortened daylight before and after the southern Mars winter solstice on March 30, 2012.

Opportunity is conducting research while located on the north-facing slope of a site called "Greeley Haven."

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.

LAMIS: A Green Chemistry Alternative for Remote-Controlled Laser Spectroscopy

LAMIS uses the energy of a high-powered laser beam to ablate a tiny spot on a sample, creating a plasma plume for spectroscopic analysis that reveals chemical elements and their isotopes. 

(Image courtesy of Applied Spectra, Inc.)

At some point this year, after NASA's rover Curiosity has landed on Mars, a laser will fire a beam of infrared light at a rock or soil sample.

This will "ablate" or vaporise a microgram-sized piece of the target, generating a plume of ionised gas or plasma, which will be analysed by spectrometers to identify the target's constituent elements.

Future Mars rovers, however, will be able to do even more. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in collaboration with Applied Spectra, Inc., have developed an advanced version of this laser technology that can also analyze a target's constituent isotopes.

This expanded capability will enable future rovers for the first time to precisely date the geological age of Martian samples.

From left, Alexander Bol'shakov, Xianglei Mao and Rick Russo are part of the research team that developed LAMIS, a green chemistry laser spectroscopy technology that can be operated across vast distances. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab)

Rick Russo, a scientist with Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division and a pioneer in laser ablation spectroscopy, led the development of LAMIS - for Laser Ablation Molecular Isotopic Spectrometry.

As with the earlier Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technology being used on rover Curiosity, the basic premise is to use the energy of a high-powered laser beam focused to a tiny spot on the surface of a sample to create a plasma plume for analysis.

Each species of atoms or ions within the plasma will emit light with signature spectral emission peaks.

However, whereas LIBS only measures the optical emission spectra of atoms and ions, LAMIS measures the emission spectra of molecules and molecular ions.

This enables LAMIS to identify the specific isotopes of a chemical element within the plasma plume.

"Relative to atomic emission, molecular spectra can exhibit significantly larger isotopic shifts due to the contributions of the vibrational and rotational motion in the molecule," Russo says.

"The trick is to be patient and wait for the hot atoms and ions in the plasma to collide and merge with the ambient environment to form an oxide, or a nitride or fluoride, and then collect the molecular light emissions."

Isotopes of Strontium
Russo and his research group have been using LAMIS to study isotopes of strontium, an alkaline earth metal commonly found in geological and natural materials.

Although strontium's major isotopes are stable (strontium-90 being a notable exception), the percentage of strontium-87 will naturally increase over time as a result of the decay of radioactive rubidium.

Comparing the ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86 is a standard tool for age dating in geochronology, oceanography and archeology. The ratio of these strontium isotopes is also used to date the origin of historic or forensic samples.

Currently, the standard means of measuring strontium isotopic ratios is by mass spectrometry technologies that involve time-consuming, labour-intensive laboratory sample dissolution work with an extensive array of instrumentation.

This sample dissolution work generates substantial chemical waste. LAMIS offers a green chemistry alternative that is faster, less expensive and can be carried out from across vast distances.

"LAMIS is not yet as sensitive or precise as mass spectrometry but unlike mass spectrometry it does not require chemical dissolution sample preparation, vacuum chambers and a laboratory infrastructure," Russo says.

"All we need is a laser beam and an optical spectrometer and we can perform real-time isotopic analyses of samples at ambient pressures and temperatures."

LAMIS represents what may be the only practical means of determining the geochronology of samples on Mars or other celestial bodies in the Solar System.

Current age estimates of such bodies suffer from uncertainties in the billions of years. That said, LAMIS also has many important applications here on Earth.

Strontium isotope ratios have been a focus in the field of medicine for both treatment and diagnostic purposes.

NASA MARS Rover Opprtunity: Greeley Haven

This NASA image is a mosaic of images taken in mid-January 2012 showing the windswept vista northward to northeastward from the location where NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending its fifth Martian winter, an outcrop informally named "Greeley Haven."

The view includes sand ripples and other wind-sculpted features in the foreground and mid-field.

Picture: NASA/JPL/CALTECH/CORNELL/ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY/AFP/Getty

Street View App: Mars' Surface Taken from Rover Opportunity

A new app that provides stunning images of the Martian surface taken by a NASA rover currently exploring the planet has been released for iPhone and Android devices.

The free Mars Images app – created by computer scientist Mark Powell of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – allows users to browse archived and new pictures taken from The Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover, which has been on Mars since 2004.

The rover has been snapping pictures of the surface and making big discoveries, such as finding evidence that water was once on the planet, since its arrival.

NASA plans to add images to the archive of Opportunity’s sister rover, The Spirit. Both Spirit and Opportunity were put on Mars in January 2004 to conduct a 90-day mission of exploration, but the rovers stayed well past their mission time.

Although the Spirit’s mission ended in mid-2011, Opportunity continues to explore Mars’s surface today.

The six-wheeled vehicles – which are controlled by NASA employees on Earth – feature various cameras to take images of Mars and its surface, such as navigation, panoramic, hazard-avoidance and microscopic imaging cameras to take pictures of small rocks.

The app will also send pictures to directly to mobile devices once new ones become available.

Image courtesy of NASA via Powellware.com

Mars Rover Opportunity: Rich Vein Of Gypsum Water Deposits

This colour view of a mineral vein called "Homestake" comes from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

The vein is about the width of a thumb and about 18 inches (45 centimeters) long.

Opportunity examined it in November 2011 and found it to be rich in calcium and sulphur, possibly the calcium-sulphate mineral gypsum. Homestake is near the edge of the "Cape York" segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater.

Exposures combined into this view were taken through Pancam filters admitting light with wavelengths centered at 601 nanometers (red), 535 nanometers (green) and 482 nanometers (blue).

The view is presented in approximate true colour. This "natural colour" is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if humans were there and able to see it with their own eyes.

The exposures were taken during the 2,769th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's career on Mars (Nov. 7, 2011).

NASA MARS Rover: Opportunity Approaching Endeavour Crater

This image from the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the view ahead on the day before the rover reached the rim of Endeavour crater.

It was taken during the 2,680th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars.

It is one of 309 images included in a video record of Opportunity's three-year journey of more than 13 miles (21 kilometers) to reach Endeavour from its last previous major destination, Victoria crater.

› See video

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

While NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity was traveling from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, between September 2008 and August 2011, the rover team took an end-of-drive image on each Martian day that included a drive.

A new video compiles these 309 images, providing an historic record of the three-year trek that totaled about 13 miles (21 kilometers) across a Martian plain pocked with smaller craters.

The video featuring the end-of-drive images is now available online, at http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=114782241 .

It shows the rim of Endeavour becoming visible on the horizon partway through the journey and growing larger as Opportunity neared that goal. The drive included detours, as Opportunity went around large expanses of treacherous terrain along the way.

The rover team also produced a sound track for the video, using each drive day's data from Opportunity's accelerometers. The low-frequency data has been sped up 1,000 times to yield audible frequencies.

"The sound represents the vibrations of the rover while moving on the surface of Mars," said Paolo Bellutta, a rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who has plotted many of Opportunity's drives and coordinated production of the video.

"When the sound is louder, the rover was moving on bedrock. When the sound is softer, the rover was moving on sand."

Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of bonus, extended missions.

Both have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010.

Opportunity continues its work at Endeavour. NASA will launch the next-generation Mars rover, car-size Curiosity, this autumn, for arrival at Mars' Gale crater in August 2012.

NASA MARS Rover Opportunity: On verge of new discovery

A closeup of the Cape York rim segment of Endeavour Crater with the Opportunity rover's path shown. 

Tisdale, the rock Opportunity sampled earlier, is on the southern tip of Cape York.

Mars rover Opportunity was poised on the rim of the 22,000 meter-wide Endeavour Crater, preparing to sample a novel rock type.

Much older than the sedimentary samples the rover's "tasted" so far, this new sample is flush with the promise of revealing clues to the planet's environment when running rivers coursed the surface.

What was supposed to have been a 90- to 180-day exploration of two distinct regions of the red planet has turned into a saga that has become one of science's most compelling and long-lasting adventures (now into its eighth year), enthralling the public and the science communities alike.

Launched the summer of 2003 and landing in January 2004, the solar-powered Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Spirit and Opportunity completed their intended basic missions in April 2004.

Raymond E. Arvidson, PhD, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts and Sciences at WUSTL, is the MER deputy principal investigator. Each continued roving until March 2010, when Spirit, mired in unexpected but scientifically interesting martian sand and pointed in an unfavorable direction to survive the winter dark, gave up the ghost.

Opportunity, on the other hand, remains active, having reached the rim of Endeavour Crater Aug. 9, 2011, knocking at the door of geology different from any it has explored during its first seven-plus years on Mars.

"Opportunity now is in a brand new mission," Arvidson says. "In late August, we looked at a rock named Tisdale, with a composition unlike any we've seen before. It has an enormous amount of zinc, bromine, phosphorus, chlorine and sulfur, all elements that are mobile in the presence of water.

The ancient rim of Endeavour represents a period when there was probably a lot more water on the surface," Arvidson says. "So, we're trying to get the chemical, mineralogical and geological setting to 'back out' those ancient conditions to reconstruct environmental conditions during this earlier time period."

The conditions that formed the sandstones Opportunity has sampled over the past seven years represent a kind of drying-out period of Mars.

Occasionally wet but usually dry and wind-blown, the sulphur-rich mineral grains formed vast dune fields that were cemented into sandstone over millions of years by occasional seeping groundwater.

But the terrain Opportunity now is sampling - largely buried by lake bed sediments - pops up in places like the Endeavour rim and is much older, going back to the earliest days of the planet.

That's some 3.5 to 4 billion years ago in the last stages of heavy bombardment, when Mars was sweeping up the last planetessimals - cosmic dust grains that collided and stuck to each other to form larger bodies. Endeavour is an impact crater produced during that heavy bombardment period.