Opportunity traverse on Meridiani Planum

Opportunity · 2004 CE – 2018 CE · Mars

Read the layered rock of a plain where orbiters had detected haematite.

Historical context

Meridiani Planum was chosen because orbiters had found haematite there, a mineral that usually forms in water. Opportunity landed inside a small crater with the evidence already at arm's length, then spent fourteen years walking south and east across the plain. It stopped only when a planet-wide dust storm took away its sunlight.

The voyage, step by step

1. A hole in one

   2004 CE

   Opportunity rolled to a stop inside a crater twenty-two metres wide, with a rim of pale bedrock standing at arm's length all around.

2. Down into Endurance

   2004 CE

   The rover drove into a crater 130 m across and spent six months reading its walls, layer by layer, from top to bottom.

3. Blueberries

   2005 CE

   Millimetre spheres of grey haematite lay loose everywhere on the plain, weathered out of the rock that had grown them.

4. The cliffs of Victoria

   2006 CE

   After a drive of six kilometres the rover stood on the scalloped rim of a crater 750 m wide and looked at cliffs of layered rock.

5. Spirit Point

   August 2011

   In August 2011, after a three-year drive of twenty-one kilometres, the rover reached the western rim of Endeavour, a crater twenty-two kilometres across.

6. Older, gentler water

   2013 CE

   The ancient rim rocks held clay minerals, which form in water that is neither salty nor acid.

7. A marathon

   24 March 2015

   On 24 March 2015 the odometer passed 42.195 km, the length of a marathon, run in eleven years and two months.

8. Night in Perseverance Valley

   June 2018

   In June 2018 a dust storm spread over the whole planet and shut off the sunlight. The last telemetry reported an opacity of 10.8 and a nearly flat battery.

Outcome

45.16 km driven from Eagle crater to the rim of Endeavour, with proof of ancient standing water.

Opportunity

Rover that worked fourteen years on Meridiani Planum and drove 45.16 km, the longest distance travelled on another world.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Opportunity (rover) — Wikipedia
• Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity, and the Exploration of the Red PlanetSteven Squyres · Hyperion, New York · 2005

Continue exploring

• Spirit traverse in Gusev craterSpirit · 2004 CE – 2010 CE
• Phoenix at the northern plainsPhoenix · 2008 CE
• Pathfinder and Sojourner at Ares VallisMars Pathfinder and Sojourner · 1997 CE
• Curiosity traverse in Gale craterCuriosity · 2012 CE – 2026 CE