'Murray Ridge' on Rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars
This scene shows the "Murray Ridge" portion of the western rim of Endeavour
Crater on Mars. The ridge is the NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's
work area for the rover's sixth Martian winter.
The ridge rises about 130 feet (40 meters) above the surrounding plain,
between "Solander Point" at the north end of the ridge and "Cape Tribulation,"
beyond Murray Ridge to the south. This view does not show the entire ridge. The
visible ridge line is about 10 meters (33 feet) above the rover's location when
the component images were taken.
The scene sweeps from east to south. The planar rocks in the foreground at
the base of the hill are part of a layer of rocks laid down around the margins
of the crater rim. At this location, Opportunity is sitting at the contact
between the Meridiani Planum sandstone plains and the rocks of the Endeavour
Crater rim. On the upper left, the view is directed about 22 kilometers (14
miles) across the center of Endeavour crater to the eastern rim.
Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004 and has been investigating parts
of Endeavour's western rim since August 2011.
The scene combines several images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity during the 3,446th Martian day, or
sol, of the mission's work on Mars (Oct. 3, 2013) and the following three sols.
On Sol 3451 (Oct. 8, 2013), Opportunity began climbing the ridge. The slope
offers outcrops that contain clay minerals detected from orbit and also gives
the rover a northward tilt that provides a solar-energy advantage during the
Martian southern hemisphere's autumn and winter.
The rover team chose to call this feature Murray Ridge in tribute to Bruce
Murray (1931-2013), an influential advocate for planetary exploration who was a
member of the science teams for NASA's earliest missions to Mars and later
served as director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena.
This view is presented in approximately true color, merging exposures taken
through three of the Pancam's color filters, centered on wavelengths of 753
nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers
(violet).
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/ASU
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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