Blog Archive

Planetary Society Hangout: A Day in the Life of the Opportunity Rover with Emily Dean

Posted by Casey Dreier on 2013/05/09 02:20 CDT | 1 comments

Thursday, May 9th, at noon PDT/3pm EDT/1900h UTC, we are joined by Emily Dean, who works on the camera team for the Opportunity rover on Mars.

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Emerges from Solar Conjunction to Wrap-Up Work on Matijevic Hill

Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2013/05/02 03:15 CDT | 1 comments

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) team waited out solar conjunction, Opportunity spent most of April atop the western rim of Endeavour Crater, conducting a chemical analysis of an ancient waterborne vein on Matijevic Hill. It was by the book until the last week of the month when the robot field geologist suffered an electronic "hiccup" known as a warm re-boot, and went into auto mode, a kind of safe mode when something doesn't go right.

No Place Like Home

Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/04/21 03:07 CDT | 6 comments

Mars and Earth share a truly striking family resemblance, but there's no mistaking which one is home.

Blast from the Past: Spirit's tracks at the "End of the Rainbow"

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/04/09 09:05 CDT | 3 comments

Doug Ellison shared this lovely panorama via Twitter over the weekend. It's from the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, taken back in 2004. The drunken path in the foreground is a visual record of just how exciting it was for Spirit to have finally made it to the Columbia Hills, and to rocks that were not fragments of basalt.

False-color Matijevic Hill Vista (Opportunity 2013-01-24)

Mars Exploration Rovers Update: Opportunity Hunkers Down for Solar Conjunction, Final Science on Matijevic Hill

Posted by A.J.S. Rayl on 2013/04/02 02:07 CDT | 5 comments

As the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission trekked further into its tenth year of exploring the Red Planet, Opportunity spent the month of March finishing up its science investigations on Matijevic Hill.

LPSC 2013: Sedimentary stratigraphy with Curiosity and Opportunity

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/03/20 04:19 CDT | 4 comments

A mind-boggling quantity of information is being presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. In my first report from the meeting, I try to make sense of the Curiosity and Opportunity sessions.