The high-resolution camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has returned a dramatic oblique view of the Martian crater that a rover explored for two years. The new view of Victoria Crater shows layers on steep crater walls, difficult to see from straight overhead, plus wheel tracks left by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between September 2006 and August 2008.
Stunning view of impact crater on Mars The rim of the half-mile-wide, 100-yard-deep Victoria Crater, located in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars, was explored by the Opportunity rover for two years ending in August 2008. Some of the rover's tracks are said to be visible around the top left hand corner of the crater.
The instruments aboard the Rover Opportunity, which are studying the Victoria Crater on Mars, has revealed more evidence of the red planet's windy, wet and wild past. According to Steve Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and the principal investigator for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission, Opportunity's two-year exploration of Victoria Crater - a half-mile wide and 250 feet deep - yielded a treasury of information about the planet's geologic history and supported previous findings indicating that water once flowed on the planet's surface. The data shows that water repeatedly came and left billions of years ago. Wind persisted much longer, heaping sand into dunes between ancient water episodes. These activities still shape the landscape today. At Victoria, steep cliffs and gentler alcoves alternate around the edge of a bowl about 0.8 kilometres in diameter.
Images of "Victoria Crater" in Mars' Meridiani Planum region, taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, provided detailed, three-dimensional information that was used to create this animation of a hypothetical flyover. NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity reached the edge of this crater in September 2006 and began exploring...