Mars Lives.

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Perspective View of 'Botany Bay' and Surroundings, With Vertical Exaggeration


A stereo pair of images from taken from Mars orbit were used to generate a digital elevation model that is the basis for this simulated perspective view of "Cape York," "Botany Bay," and "Solander Point" on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The view is from the crater interior looking toward the southwest, and the vertical exaggeration is fivefold.

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity investigated the Cape York segment of Endeavour's rim from August 2011 to May 2013 and then drove away from Cape York toward Solander Point. A white line labeled "Opportunity" indicates the rover's traverse from a target called "Esperance" on Cape York to the rover's location on 3,327th sol (Martian day) of the rover's mission on Mars (June 3, 2013).

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the images used for creating this elevation model and simulated perspective view.

For reference, the highest elevation on Solander Point is approximately 180 feet (55 meters) above the surrounding plains. Opportunity is on the way to the northern tip of Solander Point to spend the upcoming winter season. That location has a north-facing slope favorable for electrical output by Opportunity's solar panels during the Mars southern-hemisphere winter. Researchers expect that tens of yards, or meters, of ancient strata uplifted by or deposited during the formation of Endeavour Crater will be exposed for detailed measurements.

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23676-old-mars-rover-digs-up-evidence-for-drinkable-water.html

Old Mars rover digs up evidence for drinkable water
15:45 10 June 2013 by Victoria Jaggard

An old Mars rover that landed nine years ago has found the latest evidence that drinkable water once flowed on the Red Planet. Combined with previous, similar discoveries, this suggests that neutral water was once present all over the planet, so life could have arisen in multiple places.

Winter is coming to Mars's Southern hemisphere, where NASA's Opportunity rover is exploring. But before heading for sunnier hills for the rest of the season, the solar-powered rover squeezed in an examination of an ancient rocky outcrop on Endeavour crater and hit pay dirt. The outcrop, called Esperance, contains aluminium-rich clay minerals, something that must have formed in the presence of neutral, life-friendly water billions of years ago.

"We've been discovering evidence for water on Mars since Opportunity landed in 2004," Steve Squyres, the rover's principal investigator, said at a press briefing on 7 June. But the vast majority of that liquid would have been more like sulphuric acid, and only hospitable to extreme microbes.

This is the first time Opportunity has founds signs the planet once hosted water that would have been favourable to more familiar life forms. "This is water you could drink," says Squyres, of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The result shows that habitable conditions probably existed all over Mars.

Similar stories

A 2010 analysis of data from Opportunity's now defunct twin rover Spirit, which had been exploring Gusev crater on the opposite side of the planet, revealed a vast cache of carbonates, a clay mineral that also needs water to form but that dissolves in acidic conditions. Hints of carbonates had previously been spied from orbit in a more northerly Martian region called Nili Fossae.

And earlier this year NASA's roving science lab Curiosity used its more advanced instruments to drill into and examine rocks in the Gale crater. The results offered the first direct evidence of neutral, slightly salty water on Mars, which also appears to have contained compounds that early microbes could have used as energy sources.

"It's really striking to me how similar the stories are that are being told by the rocks at Endeavour crater and the rocks being investigated at Gale crater," says Squyres. "It is broadly consistent with patterns we see over the whole planet."

Esperance is part of a collection of fine-grained outcrops along the rim of Endeavour crater. Getting a good look at it was no easy task. "This took us weeks," Squyres said. The task was interrupted by a dust storm, and a period of radio silence as Mars went behind the sun from Earth's perspective. What's more, the rock itself was a challenge to examine using the older rover's tools.

Lumpy, bumpy, dirty

"It was lumpy, bumpy, dirty â€" covered with all sorts of Martian crud," says Sqyures. "It took us seven tries."

Orbital data had hinted there might be clays known as smectites in the region. On Earth these form when basalt is exposed to relatively small amounts of water. Instead, the clays inside Esperance are closer to montmorillonite, a mineral that is rich in aluminium and lower in iron. This suggests that the clays formed as large amounts of water flowed through fractures in igneous rock, said Opportunity scientist Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.

Esperance is one of the oldest rock outcrops that Opportunity has examined, probably dating from the first billion years of Martian history, says Sqyures. Finding hints of more acidic conditions in younger rocks would fit with the picture of Mars drying out and getting colder over time, so that its water became more concentrated. But without samples of rock it's hard to pinpoint ages and link the different environments with periods of Mars's past, says Squyres.

Opportunity is now on its way to Solander Point, a hill about 2.2 kilometres away that contains 50 metres of exposed layered deposits. "We are hoping the stratigraphy and some interesting chemistry and mineralogy will be exposed, and maybe we will see the geological context in the older rocks," says Arvidson.

Race against time

The situation parallels the plan for NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed in 2012, and is wrapping up its investigation of rocks at a site in Gale crater called Yellowknife Bay. In a few weeks it will begin its trek to Mount Sharp, a 5-kilometre mountain also boasting layered deposits.

The difference is that Opportunity needs to hurry. The dark cold of Martian winter will set in after August. Being on the north-facing slopes of Solander Point will give Opportunity the best chance of gathering enough sunlight to keep working through the season, says Arvidson. Nuclear-powered Curiosity will be able to take its time, meandering to the base of Mount Sharp over the next 10 months or so.

There's also the constant worry that Opportunity â€" now almost 10 years into what was designed as a 90-day mission â€" could suffer a fatal failure. Unlike Curiosity, Opportunity was built without redundant systems, so if a component breaks, the mission is over, says John Callas, the project manager for Opportunity at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"With each of the craters we've visited it's been like a whole new mission," says Callas. "But Opportunity could have a massive stroke at any time, so we treat each day preciously."

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Figure 1, an oblique, northward-looking view based on stereo orbital imaging, shows the location of Opportunity on its journey from Cape York to Solander Point when HiRISE took the new color image. Endeavour Crater is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. The distance from Cape York to Solander Point is about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers). The red line indicates the path the rover has driven.

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OPPORTUNITY UPDATE:  Stopping for Science on the Way to 'Solander Point' - sols 3364-3369, Jul. 11, 2013-Jul. 16, 2013:

Opportunity is in good health. We are now within a few hundred (656-984 feet, or 200-300 meters) of the 'Solander Point' destination. However, the team doesn't need the northerly tilt that Solander Point offers yet, so they decided to use a few of the margin sols accumulated to investigate an area of interesting terrain and gypsum signatures.

The Sol 3366 (July 13, 2013) drive began veering to the Southeast and then to the East in the Sol 3369 (July 16, 2013) drive. The team sequenced a multi-sol drive in the three-sol plan of 3366-3368 (July 13-July 15, 2013). However, though the first sol drive of 262 feet (80 meters) on (July 13, 2013) completed nominally, the second sol drive on Sol 3367 (July 14, 2013), was precluded due to exceeding a pitch-limit at the end of the first sol of driving. This was as a result of a safety check specifically designed for multi-sol drives, which worked as intended as Opportunity happened to find herself in a shallow depression at the end of Sol 3366 (July 13, 2013) drive. In total, Opportunity drove 912 feet (278 meters) in three drives for this period.

As of Sol 3369 (July 16, 2013), the solar array energy production was 450 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.705 and a solar array dust factor of 0.584.

Total odometry is 23.52 miles (37.86 kilometers).

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http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20130814a.html

August 14, 2013

MARS EXPLORATION ROVER MISSION STATUS REPORT

Mars Rover Opportunity Working at Edge of 'Solander'

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars rover Opportunity is studying the area of contact between a rock layer formed in acidic wet conditions long ago and an even older one that may be from a more neutral wet environment.

This geological contact line recording a change in environmental conditions billions of years ago lies at the foot of a north-facing slope, "Solander Point," that the rover's operators chose months ago as Opportunity's work area for the coming Martian southern hemisphere winter.

Opportunity has survived five Martian winters since it landed on Mars in January 2004. A northern slope would tilt the rover's solar panels toward the winter sun, providing an important boost in available power.

Three months ago, the mission began a trek of about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from an area where Opportunity worked for nearly two years, on "Cape York," to reach Solander Point for the winter.

"We made it," said Opportunity's project scientist, Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "The drives went well, and Opportunity is right next to Solander Point. We know we could be on that north-facing slope with a one-day drive, but we don't need to go there yet. We have time to investigate the contact between the two geological units around the base of Solander Point. Geologists love contacts."

Both Cape York and Solander Point are raised segments of the western rim of Endeavour Crater, which is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. Between these two raised segments, the ground surface is part of a geological unit called the Burns Formation, which also includes virtually all the rocks Opportunity studied from its landing site in Eagle Crater until its arrival at Cape York two years ago. The Burns Formation includes sulfate-bearing minerals that are evidence of an ancient environment containing sulfuric acid.

The geological contact that Opportunity is now investigating is where Burns Formation rocks border older rocks uplifted by the impact that formed Endeavour Crater. From observations by Mars orbiters and from Opportunity's work on Cape York, researchers suspect these older rocks may contain minerals that formed under wet conditions that were not as acidic.

The rover is also observing some loose rocks that may have rolled off Solander Point, providing a preview of what Opportunity may find after it climbs onto that rim segment.

Based on an analysis of the amount of dust accumulated on the rover's solar panels, the team plans to get Opportunity onto the north-facing slope before mid-December. Daily sunshine for the rover will reach a winter minimum in February 2014. The team expects to keep the rover mobile through the winter. Solander Point offers rock outcrops for the rover to continue studying through the winter months.

The twin rovers of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project, Opportunity and Spirit, both completed three-month prime missions in April 2004 and began years of bonus, extended missions. Both found evidence of wet environments on ancient Mars. Spirit ceased operations during its fourth Martian winter, in 2010. Opportunity shows symptoms of aging, such as loss of motion in some joints, but continues to accomplish groundbreaking exploration and science.

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http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20131023a.html

October 23, 2013

MARS EXPLORATION ROVER MISSION STATUS REPORT
Mars Rover Opportunity Heads Uphill


PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover has begun climbing "Solander Point," the northern tip of the tallest hill it has encountered in the mission's nearly 10 Earth years on Mars.

Guided by mineral mapping from orbit, the rover is exploring outcrops on the northwestern slopes of Solander Point, making its way up the hill much as a field geologist would do. The outcrops are exposed from several feet (about 2 meters) to about 20 feet (6 meters) above the surrounding plains, on slopes as steep as 15 to 20 degrees. The rover may later drive south and ascend farther up the hill, which peaks at about 130 feet (40 meters) above the plains.

"This is our first real Martian mountaineering with Opportunity," said the principal investigator for the rover, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "We expect we will reach some of the oldest rocks we have seen with this rover -- a glimpse back into the ancient past of Mars."

The hill rises southward as a ridge from Solander Point, forming an elevated portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. The ridge materials were uplifted by the great impact that excavated the crater billions of years ago, reversing the common geological pattern of older materials lying lower than younger ones.

Key targets on the ridge include clay-bearing rocks identified from observations by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, which is on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The observations were specially designed to yield mineral maps with enhanced spatial resolution.

This segment of the crater's rim stands much higher than "Cape York," a segment to the north that Opportunity investigated for 20 months beginning in mid-2011.

"At Cape York, we found fantastic things," Squyres said. "Gypsum veins, clay-rich terrain, the spherules we call newberries. We know there are even larger exposures of clay-rich materials where we're headed. They might look like what we found at Cape York or they might be completely different."

Opportunity reached Solander Point in August after months of driving from Cape York. Researchers then used the rover to investigate a transition zone around the base of the ridge. The area reveals contact between a sulfate-rich geological formation and an older formation. The sulfate-rich rocks record an ancient environment that was wet, but very acidic. The contact with older rocks may tell researchers about a time when environmental conditions changed.

Opportunity first explored the eastern side of Solander Point, then drove back north and around the point to explore the western side. "We took the time to find the best place to start the ascent," said Opportunity's project manager, John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Now we've begun that climb."

The rover began the climb on Oct. 8 and has advanced farther uphill with three subsequent drives.

"We're in the right place at the right time, on a north-facing slope," Callas said. In Mars' southern hemisphere, a north-facing slope tilts the rover's solar panels toward the sun during the Martian winter, providing an important boost in available power.

During the most recent of the five winters that Opportunity has worked on Mars, the rover spent several months without driving, safe on a small, north-facing patch of northern Cape York. The area where the rover is now climbing, however, offers a much larger north-facing area, with plenty of energy-safe ground for the rover to remain mobile. Opportunity is currently at a northward tilt of about 17 degrees.

In the coming Martian winter, daily sunshine will reach a minimum in February 2014. The rover team plans a "lily pad" strategy to make use of patches of ground with especially favorable slopes as places to recharge the rover's batteries between drives.

Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004 (Universal Time and EST; Jan. 24, PST), three weeks after its twin, Spirit. Spirit was the first Martian mountaineer, summiting a 269-foot (82-meter) hill in 2005. Spirit ceased operations in 2010. NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, landed in 2012 and is currently driving toward a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain.

Recent drives by Opportunity and Curiosity have taken the total distance driven by NASA's four Mars rovers (including Sojourner in 1997) past 50 kilometers. The total on Oct. 21 was 31.13 miles (50.10 kilometers), including 23.89 miles (38.45 kilometers) by Opportunity.

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http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/20131023a.html

October 23, 2013

MARS EXPLORATION ROVER MISSION STATUS REPORT
Mars Rover Opportunity Heads Uphill


PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover has begun climbing "Solander Point," the northern tip of the tallest hill it has encountered in the mission's nearly 10 Earth years on Mars.

Guided by mineral mapping from orbit, the rover is exploring outcrops on the northwestern slopes of Solander Point, making its way up the hill much as a field geologist would do. The outcrops are exposed from several feet (about 2 meters) to about 20 feet (6 meters) above the surrounding plains, on slopes as steep as 15 to 20 degrees. The rover may later drive south and ascend farther up the hill, which peaks at about 130 feet (40 meters) above the plains.

"This is our first real Martian mountaineering with Opportunity," said the principal investigator for the rover, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "We expect we will reach some of the oldest rocks we have seen with this rover -- a glimpse back into the ancient past of Mars."

The hill rises southward as a ridge from Solander Point, forming an elevated portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. The ridge materials were uplifted by the great impact that excavated the crater billions of years ago, reversing the common geological pattern of older materials lying lower than younger ones.

Key targets on the ridge include clay-bearing rocks identified from observations by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, which is on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The observations were specially designed to yield mineral maps with enhanced spatial resolution.

This segment of the crater's rim stands much higher than "Cape York," a segment to the north that Opportunity investigated for 20 months beginning in mid-2011.

"At Cape York, we found fantastic things," Squyres said. "Gypsum veins, clay-rich terrain, the spherules we call newberries. We know there are even larger exposures of clay-rich materials where we're headed. They might look like what we found at Cape York or they might be completely different."

Opportunity reached Solander Point in August after months of driving from Cape York. Researchers then used the rover to investigate a transition zone around the base of the ridge. The area reveals contact between a sulfate-rich geological formation and an older formation. The sulfate-rich rocks record an ancient environment that was wet, but very acidic. The contact with older rocks may tell researchers about a time when environmental conditions changed.

Opportunity first explored the eastern side of Solander Point, then drove back north and around the point to explore the western side. "We took the time to find the best place to start the ascent," said Opportunity's project manager, John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Now we've begun that climb."

The rover began the climb on Oct. 8 and has advanced farther uphill with three subsequent drives.

"We're in the right place at the right time, on a north-facing slope," Callas said. In Mars' southern hemisphere, a north-facing slope tilts the rover's solar panels toward the sun during the Martian winter, providing an important boost in available power.

During the most recent of the five winters that Opportunity has worked on Mars, the rover spent several months without driving, safe on a small, north-facing patch of northern Cape York. The area where the rover is now climbing, however, offers a much larger north-facing area, with plenty of energy-safe ground for the rover to remain mobile. Opportunity is currently at a northward tilt of about 17 degrees.

In the coming Martian winter, daily sunshine will reach a minimum in February 2014. The rover team plans a "lily pad" strategy to make use of patches of ground with especially favorable slopes as places to recharge the rover's batteries between drives.

Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004 (Universal Time and EST; Jan. 24, PST), three weeks after its twin, Spirit. Spirit was the first Martian mountaineer, summiting a 269-foot (82-meter) hill in 2005. Spirit ceased operations in 2010. NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, landed in 2012 and is currently driving toward a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain.

Recent drives by Opportunity and Curiosity have taken the total distance driven by NASA's four Mars rovers (including Sojourner in 1997) past 50 kilometers. The total on Oct. 21 was 31.13 miles (50.10 kilometers), including 23.89 miles (38.45 kilometers) by Opportunity.

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http://mars.nasa.gov/news/whatsnew/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=1578

01.03.2014
Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Decade-Old Rover Adventure Continues on Mars and Earth

Eighth graders didn't have Facebook or Twitter to share news back then, in January 2004. Bekah Sosland, 14 at the time, learned about a NASA rover landing on Mars when the bouncing-ball video on the next morning's Channel One news in her Fredericksburg, Texas, classroom caught her eye.
"I wasn't particularly interested in space at the time," she recalled last week inside the spacecraft operations facility where she now works at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "I remember I was talking with friends, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed this thing bouncing and rolling on a red surface. I watched as it stopped and opened up, and it had this rover inside."

That animation portrayed how NASA landed the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity three weeks apart, using airbags to cushion the impact at the start of the missions, planned to last for three months. Spirit reached Mars on Jan. 4, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 3, PST) and worked for six years. Opportunity landed on Jan. 25, UT (Jan. 24, PST) and is still exploring, with Sosland now on the team planning what it does each day.

"I watched that news and said, 'This is amazing: a rover on another planet!' Gears started turning in my head that day about engineering and space -- thinking about a career. It was definitely a milestone in my life and something I'll always remember."

On her path to that career, high-school teacher Brett Williams in Fredericksburg inspired her to build real rockets, and she completed a 2013 engineering degree from the University of Texas, Austin. But nobody in 2004 was predicting that either Spirit or Opportunity might still be roving Mars in summer 2013, which is when Sosland joined JPL.

"I certainly never thought I'd have an opportunity to work on Opportunity," she said. "That only became possible because this mission has been going so incredibly long. The reason Opportunity has worked so long is the people who built it and operate it. I'm loving that I can be a part of this team now."

Most of the engineers who operated Spirit and Opportunity during the three-month prime missions in 2004 have switched to other projects, including later Mars spacecraft. Sosland is among several on Opportunity's team today who were in school a decade ago.

Unlike her, Mike Seibert in late 2003 was eagerly tracking the run-up to the rover landings, while he was an engineering undergraduate at the University of Colorado. He had even ordered cardboard 3-D glasses in anticipation of images from stereo cameras on Spirit and Opportunity.

"I was living in my fraternity's house in Boulder that January. People thought I was weird, wearing 3-D glasses and looking at those pictures from Mars," said Seibert.

Less than two years later, he was working on the rover team at JPL. He has, since then, served as a mission manager and in other roles for both Spirit and Opportunity and participated in many key moments of the extended missions.

The dramatic landings and overland expeditions of Spirit and Opportunity have also inspired countless students who have not gained a chance to work on the rover team, but have participated in the adventure online by exploring images from the rovers or other activities.

What an adventure it's been. Though Spirit and Opportunity were built as nearly identical twins, and both succeeded in the main goal of finding evidence for ancient watery environments on Mars, their stories diverged early.

Spirit was sent to a crater where the basin's shape and apparent inflow channels seen from orbit suggested a lake once existed. Opportunity's landing area, almost exactly halfway around the planet, was selected mainly on the basis of a water-clue mineral detected from orbit, rather than landform shapes. Spirit's destination did not pan out initially. The crater may have held a lake, but if there are any lakebed sediments, they are thoroughly buried under later volcanic deposits. Opportunity, the luckier twin, landed a stone's throw from an exposure of layered rock that within weeks yielded compositional and textural evidence of a water-rich ancient environment.

Within the initial three-month missions and without expectation of surviving a full year, each rover set out cross-country toward other destinations: hills on the horizon for Spirit and craters exposing deeper layers for Opportunity. Spirit drove a total of 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers), some of that with one of its six wheels not rotating. Loss of use of a second wheel while the rover was in a sand trap contributed to the 2010 end of that mission. Opportunity has driven 24 miles (38.7 kilometers) and is still going strong.

One key to Spirit and Opportunity working for years, instead of a few months, has been winds that occasionally remove some of the dust accumulating on solar panels that generate the rovers' electricity. Also, the ground crew became adept at managing each rover's power consumption and taking advantage of slopes for favorably tilting the rovers toward the sun during Martian winters.

"Ultimately, it's not only how long the rovers work or how far they drive that's most important, but how much exploration and scientific discovery these missions have accomplished," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project, who has worked on the Spirit and Opportunity missions for more than 13 years.
By driving to outcrops miles from their landing sites, both rovers reached evidence about multiple episodes of Martian history, "traveling across time as well as across Martian terrain," he said. Opportunity is currently exploring outcrops on the rim of Endeavour Crater, which is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter.

"Opportunity is still in excellent health for a vehicle of its age," Callas said. "The biggest science may still be ahead of us, even after 10 years of exploration."

The science achievements have already provided major advances in understanding of Mars.

The rovers' principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., described some of the key findings, starting with what Spirit found after driving from the crater floor where it landed into hills to the east:

"In the Columbia Hills, we discovered compelling evidence of an ancient Mars that was a hot, wet, violent place, with volcanic explosions, hydrothermal activity, steam vents -- nothing like Mars today.

"At Opportunity's landing site, we found evidence of an early Mars that had acidic groundwater that sometimes reached the surface and evaporated away, leaving salts behind. It was an environment with liquid water, but very different from the environment that Spirit told us about.

"When Opportunity got to the rim of Endeavour Crater, we began a whole new mission. We found gypsum veins and a rich concentration of clay minerals. The clay minerals tell us about water chemistry that was neutral, instead of acidic -- more favorable for microbial life, if any ever began on Mars."

"Because of the rovers' longevity, we essentially got four different landing sites for the price of two."

The evidence the rovers glean from rocks at these sites may not be the only huge benefit of the adventures, though. Bekah Sosland and Mike Seibert may be examples of something even greater.

Squyres said, "I'm incredibly proud of the science we've done on this mission, but in the end, perhaps our most important legacy will turn out to be the young people who have seen what we've done and made career choices based on that. If an outcome of our mission is to help inspire a new generation of explorers to do even better than we did, that will be the greatest thing we could have accomplished."

The Mars Exploration Rover Project is one strong element in a robust program of NASA's ongoing and future Mars missions preparing for human missions there by the 2030s.
The Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter missions have been studying the Red Planet since arriving there in 2001 and 2006, respectively. NASA's next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, is examining an area that once offered conditions favorable for microbial life. NASA launched the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission two months ago, to begin orbiting in September 2014. The agency plans to launch a mission to Mars in 2016 called Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, or InSight, to learn about the deep interior of Mars. A Curiosity-size rover planned for launch in 2020 has the task to check for evidence of past life on Mars.

Special products for the 10th anniversary of the twin rovers' landings, including a gallery of selected images, are at http://mars.nasa.gov/mer10/ .

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about the project's twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .

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[Jason]

That little buggy should break every record available

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Gettin a bit dusty after 10 years... 

[David]

How do the panels capture enough sunlight to generate any power with all that dust?

I remember watching the special about it, they usually have to park it on a hill with the panels facing the sun for the winter, and that was years ago.

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How do the panels capture enough sunlight to generate any power with all that dust?

I remember watching the special about it, they usually have to park it on a hill with the panels facing the sun for the winter, and that was years ago.

The panels have produced progressively less power as the years have gone by.  Mission controllers have had to tailor the daily activities accordingly.  Occasionally wind storms sweep by and clean off some of the dust.  It is extremely important to remember... this machine was designed to last 3 months.  It has now been actively exploring for 10 years now and has travelled over 24 miles.  It is showing signs of age... it drives backward most of the time as one of the wheels is not working properly... the joints of the arm are arthritic and stiff... the tool used to brush and grind rocks is not brushing and grinding as well as it once did.  It is winter where it is now and the rover will not move very much as it must park tilted towards the sun to capture enough energy to survive... but barring some kind of mechanical or electrical failure it should survive the winter and continue on its way... 

[Jason]

I'll gladly send some rain to our Martian explorer to help with a good washing.