NASA's Mars exploration rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, made important discoveries about wet environments that could have supported microbial life on the Red Planet. While Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010, Opportunity (which was built for a three-month mission on Mars) continues to return valuable scientific data 10 years later. The picture is an artist’s concept that portrays the concept of rovers on the surface of Mars.
Photos courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's Opportunity observed this outcrop on the "Murray Ridge" portion of the rim of Endeavour Crater as the rover approached the 10th anniversary of its landing on Mars. The scene includes the outcrop called Moreton Island, which the rover imaged to help researchers choose a target for contact investigation with tools on the rover's robotic arm.
Photo courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This before-and-after pair of images of the same patch of ground in front of the rover, taken 13 days apart, documents the arrival of a bright rock on to the scene. The one on the left is from 3,528th Martian day, or sol, of the rover Opportunity's work on Mars (December 26, 2013). The one on the right, with the newly arrived rock, is from Sol 3540 (January 8, 2014).
Photo courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Opportunity recorded the component images for this self-portrait about three weeks before completing a decade of work on Mars. Opportunity landed on Mars on January 25, 2004 for a mission that was planned to last three months.
Photo courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Researchers used Opportunity to find a water-related mineral on the ground that had been detected from orbit, and found it in the dark veneer of rocks on the rim of Endeavour Crater. This false-color view from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity shows a dark veneer, exposed after brushing with the rover's rock abrasion tool.
Photo courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's Mars exploration rover, Opportunity, used its panoramic camera (Pancam) to capture this false-color panorama of Matijevic Hill area in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. Some of the outcrops that the rover examined are labelled.
Photo courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
On May 19, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera (Pancam) mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover's 489th Martian day.
Photo courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The gold line on this image shows Opportunity's route from the landing site, in upper left, to the area it is investigating on the western rim of Endeavour Crater as of the rover's 10th anniversary on Mars, in Earth years. The base image for the map is a mosaic of images taken by the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Photo courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech