Mars orbiter looks down on rover

[OXO]

Mars orbiter looks down on rover

Nasa's new orbiter at Mars has taken a spectacular picture of the Opportunity rover sitting on a crater's rim.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrived at the Red Planet in March and has only recently moved into a prime position to begin science investigations.

Its view of Victoria Crater will help US space agency researchers decide where to send Opportunity to make ground observations.

Imaged from a height of 297km, the 2.3m-wide rover appears as a tiny dot.

"This is a tremendous example of how our Mars missions in orbit and on the surface are designed to reinforce each other and expand our ability to explore and discover," said Doug McCuistion, the director of Nasa's Mars exploration programme in Washington.

Opportunity has been making its way to Victoria Crater for the past 21 Earth months - about half its mission on the Red Planet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5413754.stm

Amazing :shock: 8)

[GordonCopestake]

How cool is that?

[OXO]

Amazing stuff eh wish they had one around each of the planets now that would been something else 8)

[geppetto]

That is beyond amazing

what a camera 8)

[OXO]

Check out the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pages here http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/ for even more unreal images

[SteelRat]

Would a shot like that not have been useful for 'Tranquility base'? Just to silence all the conspiracy die hards? It'd prob'ly too late now - equipment and footprints could've been placed there since the US started using the Aurora re-usable back in the late seventies. Of course we all know they have a base on the far side already

[FLO]

Heres another:

Mars Rover at Victoria Crater Imaged from Orbit

An unusual spot has been found on Mars that scientists believe is not natural in origin. The spot appears mobile and is now hypothesized to be a robot created by an intelligent species alien to Mars. In fact, the spot appears to be NASA's robotic Opportunity rover currently rolling across Mars. The ability to see the Martian rover from orbit has recently been demonstrated by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The new spacecraft achieved orbit around Mars in 2006 March. Last week, MRO imaged the location of Victoria Crater and the rover Opportunity that had just arrived there. In the above image at spectacularly high resolution, objects about one meter in size are resolved, and this includes the rolling rover. Such images may help scientists better determine if any safe path exists for Opportunity to enter large crater. In the inset image on the upper left, the whole of Victoria Crater was also imaged by MRO.

Source: APOD

http://tinyurl.com/ztoxo

[OXO]

WOW :shock:!

James

[Mike Godfrey]

A-Mazing!!

Any chance of clocking Beagle 2 ?

Cheers for that Image.

Mike