APOD: Opportunity at Santa Maria Crater (2011 Jan 29)

[APOD Robot]

Opportunity at Santa Maria Crater

Explanation: Celebrating 7 years on the surface of the Red Planet, Mars exploration rover Opportunity now stands near the rim of 90 meter wide Santa Maria crater. Remarkably, Opportunity and its fellow rover Spirit were initially intended for a 3 month long primary mission. Still exploring, the golf cart-sized robot and shadow (far right) appear in the foreground of this panoramic view of its current location. The mosaic was constructed using images from the rover's navigation camera. On its 7 year anniversary, Opportunity can boast traversing a total of 26.7 kilometers along the martian surface. After investigating Santa Maria crater, controllers plan to have Opportunity resume a long-term trek toward Endurance crater, a large, 22 kilometer diameter crater about 6 kilometers from Santa Maria. During coming days, communication with the rover will be more difficult as Mars moves close to alignment with the Sun as seen from planet Earth's perspective.

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[hstarbuck]

Any geology(Marsology) links to the crater in this photo? It looks like there are solid rocks that are above a layer of sand. Is this an illusion? The rocks look to possibly have been formed by spheroidal chemical weathering. And where does the sand come from in the first place? Is there agreement that water was the mechanism? Shot from hip: Oceans created the sand, disappeared and then a volcanic episode deposited a layer above. Fast forward and the rock breaks down at the weakest points creating "spheres". Left field: imagine waves on Mars.

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Opportunity at Santa Maria Crater

Explanation: Celebrating 7 years on the surface of the Red Planet, Mars exploration rover Opportunity now stands near the rim of 90 meter wide Santa Maria crater.

Remarkably, Opportunity and its fellow rover Spirit were initially intended for a 3 month long primary mission.

[royalpalms6]

How are the camera optics kept clean of Martian dust after severall years on the planet?

[neufer]

Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción

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<<The Santa Maria de la Inmaculada Concepción, (English: Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception), was the largest of the three ships used by Christopher Columbus in his first voyage. Her master and owner was Juan de la Cosa. The Santa Maria was probably a small carrack, about 70 feet long, used as the flagship for the expedition. The other ships of the Columbus expedition were the smaller caravel-type ships Santa Clara, remembered as the Niña ("The Girl") and Pinta ("The Painted" – this might be a reference to excessive makeup). All these ships were second-hand and were never meant for exploration.

The Santa Maria was originally named La Gallega ("The Galician"), because she was built in Pontevedra, Galicia, in Spain's north-west. It seems the ship was known to her sailors as Marigalante, Spanish for "Gallant Maria". Bartolomé de Las Casas never used La Gallega, Marigalante or Santa Maria in his writings, preferring to use la Capitana or La Nao.

The Santa Maria had a single deck and three masts. She was the slowest of Columbus's vessels but performed well in the Atlantic crossing. She ran aground off the present-day site of Cap Haitien, Haiti on December 25, 1492, and was lost. Realizing that the ship was beyond repair, Columbus ordered his men to strip the timbers from the ship. The timbers from the ship were later used to build Môle Saint-Nicolas, which was originally called La Navidad (Christmas) because the wreck occurred on Christmas Day.

Columbus's crew on the first voyage was not composed of criminals as is widely believed. Many were experienced seamen from the port town of Palos and the surrounding countryside and coastal area of Galicia. It is true, however, that the Spanish sovereigns offered amnesty to convicts who signed up for the voyage, but only four men took up the offer: one who had killed a man in a fight, and three friends of his who had then helped him escape from jail.

There were some crew members from Andalusia, as the voyage was financed by a syndicate of seven noble Genovese bankers resident in Seville (the group was linked to Amerigo Vespucci and funds belonging to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Medici). Hence all the accounting and recording of the voyage was kept in Seville. This fact debunks the romantic story that the Queen of Spain had used a necklace that she had received from her husband the King, as collateral for a loan.>>

[orin stepanek]

The little rovers that could! They did way more than expected and Opportunity still going is amazing. It is sad that Spirit is stuck with it's batteries run down. The engineers should be applauded for designing these little robots.

[ny1b@toast.net]

Those little brownish/green spheres, all about identical in size, look more like a biological growth.

[biddie67]

Keep a-moving little rover, there's a water up ahead ... somewhere ... maybe ...

On a more serious note, continuing congratulations for sure!!!

[biddie67]

Up at the carrack of Juan ...

very good ((grin))

[NoelC]

Something always bothers me about these Mars photos... The sky is bright.

I understand the Martian atmosphere has something like 1% of the density of ours. That's practically a vacuum!

So why is it so bright? Does carbon dioxide diffuse light much more strongly than Nitrogen/Oxygen? Or is it dust? Hard to imagine so little gas could suspend much dust, but then we do hear about dust storms.

I have always wondered about this but have never had the time to go research it further.

-Noel

[neufer]

Mars' thin but dusty atmosphere.

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Something always bothers me about these Mars photos... The sky is bright. I understand the Martian atmosphere has something like 1% of the density of ours. That's practically a vacuum! So why is it so bright?

Does carbon dioxide diffuse light much more strongly than Nitrogen/Oxygen? Or is it dust? Hard to imagine so little gas could suspend much dust, but then we do hear about dust storms.

It is very fine dust left over from dust storms that can't rain out and which is very slow to fall out under Mar's weak gravity.

Blue sunset on dusty Mars.

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The [Martian] atmosphere is quite dusty, giving the Martian sky a light brown or orange color when seen from the surface; data from the Mars Exploration Rovers indicate that suspended dust particles within the atmosphere are roughly 1.5 micrometers across.

[rstevenson]

Something always bothers me about these Mars photos... The sky is bright.

They brighten it sometimes, perhaps to keep Mars from looking depressing. Click the "Santa Maria crater" link in the first line of the APOD description for a more realistic view (according to JPL, not me) of daylight on Mars.

Rob

[neufer]

Something always bothers me about these Mars photos... The sky is bright.

They brighten it sometimes, perhaps to keep Mars from looking depressing. Click the "Santa Maria crater" link in the first line of the APOD description for a more realistic view (according to JPL, not me) of daylight on Mars.

They probably brighten it because the Sun is only half as bright at the current distance of Mars.

[NoelC]

Thanks, Art. That the dust is very fine and water isn't cleaning it out of the atmosphere were the things I was overlooking.

That Mars has lost most of its atmosphere is a real shame.

-Noel

[Guest]

Those little brownish/green spheres, all about identical in size, look more like a biological growth.

They, blueberries, are so prevalent on the surface at both rover locations

Click to view full size image

they do resemble some kind of fossilized organic structure.
Curiously, If either rover were ratholing in fossil territory on earth and we were analizing the data returned, would we determine what we see to be mineral or fossil?

[cwilder2]

It looks like the end of the world. Like maybe how earth would look after a nuclear bomb went off. No sign of any life, water, or vegetation!!

[EmperorOfCanada]

OK I guess it is left to me to set the crackpots off by pointing out the skull like rock with the rib like formation near it. It's so ... alien! I here by name it Maria Man.

[jshirey19]

Did anyone notice what looks like a path on the ground which also leads to what looks like a side impact on the far side of the crater? The path starts at the sundial on Opportunity, runs straight up the image and ends at the dark splotch on the crater side. Easily seen in the full size image. I suppose an impact which caught the edge of the crater threw debris towards the sundial....or was something rolling on the ground and struck the back of the crater's wall? hmmm

[Sam]

Did anyone notice what looks like a path on the ground which also leads to what looks like a side impact on the far side of the crater? The path starts at the sundial on Opportunity, runs straight up the image and ends at the dark splotch on the crater side. Easily seen in the full size image. I suppose an impact which caught the edge of the crater threw debris towards the sundial....or was something rolling on the ground and struck the back of the crater's wall? hmmm

I think this is an artifact of image composition - the path is merely the seam between two separate images. Note that some of Opportunity has been cut off, and in other places the rocks don't line up. (I'm sure someone else could better explain why this is so.)

Amazing image, nonetheless!
Sam

[Cam]

Actually, it looks like Opportunity is heading to "Endeavour" crater as its next stop, not "Endurance" (it has already been there).

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13794

[neufer]

Actually, it looks like Opportunity is heading to "Endeavour" crater as its next stop, not "Endurance" (it has already been there).

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13794

Shame on the rest of us for missing that one.

The HMS Endeavour was the Royal Navy research vessel on which James Cook reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus.

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The Endurance was Sir Ernest Shackleton's
three-masted barquentine crushed by ice,
in the Weddell Sea in 1915

[JetsonRING]

One of these days we are going to take a picture like this and there will be a footprint in the picture (assuming Martians have feet).

[neufer]

One of these days we are going to take a picture like this and there will be a footprint in the picture (assuming Martians have feet).