Opportunity Releases Video of Martian Drives

Experts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, have just released a new video produced using data from the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Opportunity. The dataset includes photos collected over the past three years of driving on the Red Planet.

A total of 319 images gathered over the past 36 months were included in this video, which now covers a distance of more than 13 miles (21 kilometers) on the surface of the Mars. The diversity of the desolate landscape immediately becomes apparent.

Interestingly, at some point, the rim of the rover's long-term target – Endeavour Crater – is beginning to shape up in the horizons, until Opportunity reaches. This happened just a short while ago, but the machine has already analyzed two rocks at the rim.

Opportunity will turn 8 in January 2012, so the robot has a lot of boast. It drove from more than 33 kilometers on the surface of Mars, when its original mission only called for it to endure for three months and drive no more than several hundred meters.