NASA Shows Video of Opportunity Rover 11 Marathon

Photo: NASA / JPL

NASA showed a video of the Martian marathon, which resulted in the Opportunity rover from January 2004 to April 2015 passing the 42,2 kilometer from its initial position in the Eagle crater. This is reported on Online agency.

The rover resumed its active work on 27 on June 2015 of the year, when the mutual position of the Sun, Earth and Mars allowed him to contact NASA. Rover does not store its data in memory, but immediately sends it to scientists.

Initially, the rover worked in a mode involving the preservation of information in non-volatile flash memory. Recently, however, the on-board computer of the rover has rebooted several times, which could mean the loss of the collected data. For this reason, the scientists decided to take information from the rover at the time of its collection.

During its seventh Martian winter, the rover is expected to continue exploring the minerals on the surface of the Red Planet. Currently, Opportunity is located on the upper edge of the rim of Endeavor crater, reaching a kilometer in diameter of 22.

The rover has been studying Endeavor since 2011. Scientists expect that since August the 2015-3 rover will be able to spend several months in the crater, storing solar energy.

Of the more 40 probes flown to Mars, less than half completed their missions successfully. Currently on the surface of the planet there are two rovers - Curiosity and Opportunity.

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity went to the Red Planet 26 on November 2011 of the year. It was launched with the Atlas V 541 launch vehicle from a launch site at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Landing on Mars took place 6 August 2012, in the area of ​​the crater Gale. This is the third rover launched by NASA as part of the Mars Science Laboratory program.