* Astronomy

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RE: The Opportunity rover

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Mars Rover Opportunity Begins Study of Valley's Origin

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has reached the main destination of its current two-year extended mission -- an ancient fluid-carved valley incised on the inner slope of a vast crater's rim.
As the rover approached the upper end of "Perseverance Valley" in early May, images from its cameras began showing parts of the area in greater resolution than what can be seen in images taken from orbit above Mars.
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Opportunity Rover's 7th Mars Winter to Include New Study Area

Operators of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity plan to drive the rover into a valley this month where Opportunity will be active through the long-lived rover's seventh Martian winter, examining outcrops that contain clay minerals.
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Rover Amnesia Event Follows Latest Memory Reformatting

The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity learned Thursday that the long-lived rover experienced a brief amnesia event related to its flash memory, the first since a reformatting of that nonvolatile type of memory a week earlier.
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NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover Finishes Marathon, Clocks in at Just Over 11 Years

There was no tape draped across a finish line, but NASA is celebrating a win. The agencys Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Red Planet marathon Tuesday -- 42.195 kilometres with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.
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Rover Examining Odd Mars Rocks at Valley Overlook

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed last month to an overlook for surveying "Marathon Valley," a science destination chosen because spectrometer observations from orbit indicate exposures of clay minerals.
Near the overlook, it found blocky rocks so unlike any previously examined on Mars that the rover team has delayed other activities to provide time for a thorough investigation.
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NASA Mars Orbiter Views Opportunity Rover on Ridge

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Mars Rover Heads Uphill After Solving 'Doughnut' Riddle

Researchers have determined the now-infamous Martian rock resembling a jelly doughnut, dubbed Pinnacle Island, is a piece of a larger rock broken and moved by the wheel of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in early January.
Only about 1.5 inches wide (4 centimeters), the white-rimmed, red-centered rock caused a stir last month when it appeared in an image the rover took Jan. 8 at a location where it was not present four days earlier.
More recent images show the original piece of rock struck by the rover's wheel, slightly uphill from where Pinnacle Island came to rest.
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Opportunity rover clocks 10 years on Mars

The American space agency (Nasa) is celebrating 10 years of operation for its Opportunity rover on Mars.
The six-wheeled vehicle landed on the planet's Meridiani plains on 25 January, 2004, at 05:05 GMT.
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Mystery Rock 'Appears' in Front of Mars Rover

After a decade of exploring the Martian surface, the scientists overseeing veteran rover Opportunity thought they'd seen it all. That was until a rock mysteriously "appeared" a few feet in front of the six wheeled rover a few days ago.
News of the errant rock was announced by NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres of Cornell University at a special NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory "10 years of roving Mars" event at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, Calif., on Thursday night.
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