Victoria Crater—A Martian Descent by Opportunity
“While we take seriously the uncertainty about whether Opportunity will climb back out, the potential value of investigations that appear possible inside the crater convinced me to authorize the team to move forward into Victoria Crater,” said Alan Stern, NASA associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington. “It is a calculated risk worth taking, particularly because this mission has far exceeded its original goals.”
A media teleconference was held on June 28th for the purpose of discussing NASA’s twin Mars’s rover, Opportunity, and its new adventure into the Martian crater, Victoria Crater. Plans have been laid out for the famous sibling of the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to climb down into the huge crater that is half-mile-wide. Dangerous and treacherous, there will always be the possibility of the rover getting lost or losing its high technology capabilities. But obviously NASA is willing to take the chance, as Victoria Crater quite possibly will offer up clues about the Martian’s ancient and wet environment, carefully forming another division of its Mars mission—deep into its depths with the descent beginning around July 7th.
It took Opportunity 21 months to reach Victoria Crater, after it landed on Mars with Spirit, reaching its goal on September 26, 2006. Now it seems as if it will be entering the crate at the location named “Duck Bay.” This area was chosen, as it seemed to be the safest entry point, after the rover searched the edge of Victoria Crater for a couple of days. Originally the rover, Opportunity, was supposed to be on Mars for 90 days, now operating more than 12 times the original planned mission time frame.
The reason the mission has extended beyond its limitations is the allure of the Martian examination of the soil and exposed materials. As the rover climbs deeper and further into the Victoria Crater, the older the rocks that will be examined in the crater’s exposed walls. According to NASA, once the rover enters the alcove called Duck Bay, it will begin to investigate the eroding crater, finding it has “a scalloped rim of cliff-like promontories, or capes, alternating with more gently sloped alcoves, or bays.”
The Victoria Crater was formed when a meteor impact, millions of years ago,
excavated the area. Opportunity landed on Mars, January 2004, about four miles north of the Victoria Crater—a crater that is half a mile across and five times the wide of Endurance Crater, another place that in 2004, Opportunity spent six months exploring.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Mission Objectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
