See what Opportunity has been doing on Mars

William Atkins
Wednesday, 12 October 2011 22:18

Science - Space

For the past three years, the Mars rover Opportunity has been slowly exploring Mars, and taking pictures like any good tourist would do. Now, they have been compiled in a three-minute video clip.

 

During this time, the Opportunity rover has traveled from Victoria Crater and across the Meridiani Planum to Endeavour Crater.

The 13-mile (21-kilometer) trip took three years, but you get to see it boiled down to three minutes, in 309 pictures.

The video comes to you from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.

The YouTube.com video, showing the 3-minute video clip, is called: 'Rover's Eye View of Three-Year Trek on Mars.'

The video comments: 'During the three-year trek of NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater, rover planners captured a horizon photograph at the end of each drive. 309 images taken during the 13-mile journey appear in this video.'

The MSNBC article 'Three years on Mars ... in 3 minutes' provides a quote from Paolo Bellutta, part of the JPL team for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission.

Bellutta states, "The sound [of the video] represents the vibrations of the rover while moving on the surface of Mars. When the sound is louder, the rover was moving on bedrock. When the sound is softer, the rover was moving on sand."