The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, now in its new location at the inner edge of the small crater surrounding it, was able to take a picture of the plains where its backshell and parachute landed. Opportunity is currently investigating a rock outcropping with its suite of robotic geologic tools. According to NASA, the approximate true-color image was created by combining data from the panoramic camera's red, green and blue filters.
In the coming weeks and months, the main tasks for Opportunity and its twin rover Spirit will be to explore the areas around their landing sites for evidence in rocks and soils about whether those areas ever had environments that were watery and possibly suitable for sustaining life.
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NASA February 10, 2004
This is one of the neatest pictures from Mars that I have seen to date. It is quite interesting. Opportunity has also taken the first close-up pictures ever of Martian bedrock, and these reveal important new details of the intriguing strata. The rover's earlier observations revealed layering, as well as round grains in the soil, both highly suggestive of sedimentary rocks deposited in water. The new close-up images show that the thinness of the parallel layers of the rock continues down to the smallest scales the images are capable of showing. Furthermore, the small bead-like spheres seen earlier on the soil turn out to be heavily concentrated in the bedrock itself.
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