Opportunity Moves to New Martian Rock, Chester Lake

Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) mission controllers at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, say that the robot Opportunity has now moved to a new study target at the rim of Endeavour Crater, on the surface of the Red Planet.

The machine arrived at this location a few weeks ago, after driving towards it for more than three years. Opportunity has spent more than 7 ½ years on the surface of Mars, and it will most likely turn 8 without incident in January 2012.

For the past couple of weeks, the robot focused its attention and its robotic arm on a piece of rock called Tisdale 2, which is studied in detail. All data collected on the nature of the object were relayed back to the JPL via orbital relay points.

Once its investigation was complete, Opportunity set course for Chester Lake, another interesting rocky outcropping nearby. Experts at JPL, as well as the mission's science investigators, are extremely pleased at the treasure trove of data the rover is uncovering.

Unlike Tisdale 2, which scientists determined to be a boulder coming from a small crater on Endeavour's massive rim, Chester Lake is a bedrock outcropping, which makes it very important. By studying it, researchers hope to gain more insight into how Martian soils are organized.

What is very interesting to experts at this point is the fact that all the sample Opportunity studied since reaching the massive crater appear to have been produced during a much more distant period in the planet's past than anything the machine identified since arriving at Mars in 2004.

At this point, the robot is focusing its attention on the interesting rock it has in front of it. Its mass spectrometer and abrasion tools will be used to gain more insight into the nature and possible origins of this interesting outcropping.

Endeavour Crater has the potential to answer a large number of questions related to the Red Planet's potentially-wet past. Data from the ESA Mars Express, the NASA Mars Odyssey and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft seem to confirm that liquid water once flowed on the planet.

Due to the fact that the impact which created Endeavour crater pierced so deep into the ground, multiple layers of Martian rocks are exposed, and Opportunity is there to analyze as many of them as possible. Soon, it will no longer be alone in its quest.

NASA is poised to launch the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover Curiosity this November. The machine, which will make its way to Mars by August 2012, will investigate Gale Crater and the 5-kilometer mountain at its core.

The JPL manages both MER and the MSL for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, in Washington, DC. The Lab is a division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).