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MARSDAILY
An Opportunity To Go Backwards Makes For An Interesting View

  • Desktop available - 1024x768 - 1280 x 1024 and 1360 x 768 or Raw image download at JPL Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
    • by Staff Writers
     Pasadena CA (JPL) Jul 16, 2009
     NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used its navigation camera to take the images combined into this 360-degree view of the rover's surroundings on the 1,850th Martian day, or sol, of its surface mission (April 7, 2009).

    Opportunity had driven 62.5 meters (205 feet) that sol, southward away from an outcrop called "Penrhyn," which the rover had been examining for a few sols, and toward a crater called "Adventure."

    In preceding drives, the drive motor for the right-front wheel had been drawing more current than usual, so engineers drove Opportunuity backward on Sol 1950, a strategy to redistribute lubricant and reduce friction in the wheel.

    North is in the center of the image; south at both ends. Opportunity's position on Sol 1850 was about 1.3 kilometers (0.8 mile) south-southwest of Victoria Crater. For scale, the distance between the parallel wheel tracks is about 1 meter (about 40 inches).

    This view is presented as a cylindrical projection with geometric seam correction.

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