NASA's Mars Rover to Head Toward Bigger Crater
NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its 
sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the 
past two years.
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its 
sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the 
past two years.To reach the crater the rover team calls Endeavour, Opportunity 
would need to drive approximately 12 kilometers (7 miles) to the 
southeast, matching the total distance it has traveled since landing 
on Mars in early 2004. The rover climbed out of Victoria Crater 
earlier this month."We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to 
go anyway," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator 
for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit. 
"This crater is staggeringly large compared to anything we've seen before."Getting there would yield a look inside a bowl 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) 
across. Scientists expect to see a much deeper stack of rock layers than 
those examined by Opportunity in Victoria Crater."I would love to see that view from the rim," Squyres said. "But even 
if we never get there, as we move southward we expect to be getting to 
younger and younger layers of rock on the surface. Also, there are large 
craters to the south that we think are sources of cobbles that we want to 
examine out on the plain. Some of the cobbles are samples of layers deeper 
than Opportunity will ever see, and we expect to find more cobbles as we 
head toward the south."Opportunity will have to pick up the pace to get there. The rover team 
estimates Opportunity may be able to travel about 110 yards each day it is 
driven toward the Endeavour crater.  Even at that pace, the journey could take two years."This is a bolder, more aggressive objective than we have had before," said 
John Callas, the project manager for both Mars rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's tremendously exciting. It's new science.  
It's the next great challenge for these robotic explorers."Opportunity, like Spirit, is well past its expected lifetime on Mars, and 
might not keep working long enough to reach the crater. However, two new 
resources not available during the 4-mile drive toward Victoria Crater in 2005 
and 2006 are expected to aid in this new trek.One is imaging from orbit of details smaller than the rover itself, using the High 
Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance 
Orbiter, which arrived at the Red Planet in 2006."HiRISE allows us to identify drive paths and potential hazards on the scale of the 
rover along the route," Callas said. "This is a great example of how different parts 
of NASA's Mars Exploration Program reinforce each other."Other advantages come from a new version of flight software uplinked to Opportunity 
and Spirit in 2006, boosting their ability to autonomously choose routes and avoid 
hazards such as sand dunes.During its first year on Mars, Opportunity found geological evidence that the area 
where it landed had surface and underground water in the distant past.  The rover's 
explorations since have added information about how that environment changed over time.  
Finding rock layers above or below the layers already examined adds windows into 
later or earlier periods of time.NASA's JPL built and manage the rovers and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's 
Science Mission Directorate, Washington.For images and information about Spirit and Opportunity, visit:http://www.nasa.gov/rovers