Opportunity on Endeavour's rim

Filed under pretty pictures, pics of spacecraft in space, Mars, Mars Exploration Rovers, Opportunity, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

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This HiRISE image, taken on September 10, 2011, shows the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity sitting atop some light-toned outcrops on the rim of Endeavour Crater, near a smaller crater informally named Odyssey.

NASA / JPL / U. Arizona

Opportunity is not at the edge of Odyssey's rim -- that is a large boulder. Opportunity blends a little better with the dusty ground, and is a small spot slightly more than one crater diameter to the right of Odyssey.

Opportunity travelled nearly three years to reach this rim because it contains rocks even more ancient than the rocks of Meridiani Planum, which the rover has been exploring since 2004, and hence may teach us something about an even more ancient era in Martian history.