LOS ANGELES — NASA’s surviving Mars rover Opportunity has reached the rim of a 14-mile-wide crater where the robot geologist will examine rocks older than any it has seen in its seven years on the surface of the red planet, scientists said Wednesday.
The solar-powered, six- wheel rover arrived at Endeavour crater after driving 13 miles from a smaller crater named Victoria. The drive took nearly three years.
Craters can provide windows into the planet’s past because layers of material from long-ago eras are exposed.
A big, new NASA rover named Curiosity is awaiting launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a $2.5 billion mission to explore a towering mountain inside a 96-mile-wide crater. Curiosity, powered by a radioisotope instead of sunlight, is expected to land on Mars in August 2012.
The Associated Press
