Los Angeles – Two months after surviving a giant dust storm, one of NASA’s robotic rovers on Mars began a risky drive Tuesday into a crater blasted open by a meteor eons ago.
Scientists want the rover Opportunity to travel 40 feet down toward a bright band of rocks in the Victoria Crater. They believe that the rocks represent an ancient surface of Mars and that studying them could shed light on the planet’s early climate.
Opportunity’s initial task was to “toe dip” into the crater, a move that involves rolling its six wheels below the rim and immediately back out to gauge its footing before making the actual descent later this week.
Data beamed back to Earth showed a nearly perfect mission: Opportunity successfully trekked 13 feet into the crater but ran into higher-than-expected slip on the way back. The rover could not get over a small sand-dune ripple near the crater rim and came to rest. Still, mission leaders called the drive a success.
The long-awaited descent into the crater – measuring a half-mile across and about 200 to 230 feet deep – had been on hold since July, when a series of sun-blotting dust storms raged in the southern hemisphere. At the height of the storm, the solar-powered Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, went into sleep mode.
