Opportunity Reaches Its New Home

The west rim of Endeavour Crater, seen from outside
A portion of the west rim of Endeavour crater sweeps southward in this color view
from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Click for full-size image.
It shouldn't be long until Opportunity is peering over the rim inside.

Yet another adventure is about to begin for NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover B, more famously known as Opportunity. The golf-cart-size, solar-powered vehicle reached the outer hills of its new destination, Endeavour crater, on August 9th after a 3-year, 13-mile (21-km) trek across the flat Martian terrain from the previous big crater it explored, Victoria.

The site from which Opportunity radioed Earth has been named “"Spirit Point,” in memory of its smaller twin, Spirit, that collected data on Mars from January 2004 to March 2011.

Launched in 2003, both Spirit and Opportunity were expected to complete a 90-Martian-day mission; instead, Opportunity has endured 30 times longer and traversed a total of 20.81 miles. Since touching down south of the Martian equator on January 25, 2004, the rover has explored five craters: Eagle, Endurance, Erebus, Victoria, and Santa Maria.

Endeavour, its new destination, is huge: 14 miles (22 km) wide — 25 times as large as Victoria, whose geology the rover studied for two years. A spectrometer aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has detected clay minerals inside Endeavour, which likely formed during a warmer and wetter period on the Red Planet.

"We're soon going to get the opportunity to sample a rock type the rovers haven't seen yet," says science-team member Matthew Golombek (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California).

Mission scientists will next choose the safest way to have Opportunity descend into the crater. There’s no word on how long they expect this epic exploration to last.

However, we do know that Opportunity's larger successor, Curiosity, will soon be launched on its way to Gale crater on another side of Mars.

2011 Perseid Meteor Showers

The Perseid meteor shower is an annual meteor shower that is extremely regular in its timing and can potentially be visible for weeks in the late summer sky, depending on weather and location.

The Perseid meteor shower is named after the constellation Perseus, which is located in roughly the same point of the night sky where the Perseid meteor shower appears to originate from. This is a useful naming convention, but not very accurate!

The source of the Perseid meteor shower is actually debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. Every year, the earth passes through the debris cloud left by the comet when the earth's atmosphere is bombarded by what is popularly known as "falling stars."

When and where to look for Perseids in 2011

In 2011, visibility (the weather also notwithstanding) will be somewhat limited by a full moon on August 13 which will likely wipe out fainter meteors from view.

Because of the way the earth hits this debris cloud, the Perseid meteor shower is much more visible in the Northern hemisphere.

People in Canada, for instance, can see the meteor shower by mid-July, but generally there isn't much activity at such an early date. Throughout Europe, the US and the rest of North America, meteor shower activity usually peaks sometime around August 12th, when it is not unusual to see at least 60 meteors per hour streaking across the Northeast sky.

The meteors are certainly bright, but they are actually only tiny objects, usually no more than a grain of sand. However, as they travel at speeds of up to 71 kilometers per second, these small particles put on quite a brilliant show.

The Perseid meteor showers were observed as far back as two thousand years ago, and in ancient Europe, the Perseid meteor shower was known as the "Tears of St. Lawrence."

How to view Perseids

Today, the best place to observe the Perseid meteor shower (or any meteor shower for that matter), is somewhere dark, away from light pollution, and with the moon out of the field of vision. The less light visible, the more brilliant the meteor shower will be.

Telescope or camera?

While mostly viewable to the naked eye, the annual Perseid meteor show may be partially obstructed by the moon, clouds or night mist, so amateur astronomers may want to carry along a pair of binoculars or a camera with a telescopic lens. Even on clear nights, some kind of viewing aid comes in handy for catching sight of even the faintest of falling stars, aptly named "telescopic" meteors. Experts usually just advise to forget the telescope, and simply look up toward the northeast sky.

For photographing the annual event, a digital camera mounted on a tripod helps to steady the images that swiftly move across the sky. A quick trigger finger also helps. Even random clicks during the height of Perseid "prime-time" will guarantee that you'll catch something! Be sure to have the camera focused on infinity and, if your camera permits, leave the shutter open for several minutes for the most spectacular photographic effects.

New Video Showing Water Maybe Flowing on Mars

Scientists believe they have found water on Mars after finding that lines on the planet's surface are more visible in warm seasons.

Scientists announced on Thursday that they saw dark, finger-like features appearing and extending down some Martian slopes during late spring through summer, which fade in the winter and return during next spring.

These recurring features were located on several steep slopes in Mars' southern hemisphere, according to NASA, and are believed to be briny water.

"The best explanation for these observations so far is the flow of briny water," said Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, in a statement. McEwen is the principal investigator for the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, and the lead author of a report about the recurring flows published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

Water flows that appear in spring and summer on a slope inside Mars' Newton crater are shown in this combination of orbital imagery with 3-D modeling in this NASA handout photo released to Reuters August 4, 2011. This image has been reprojected to show a view of a slope as it would be seen from a helicopter inside the crater, with a synthetic Mars-like sky. The source observation was made May 30, 2011, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Color has been enhanced.


This series of images shows warm-season features that might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today. Evidence for that possible interpretation is presented in a report by McEwen et al. in the Aug. 5, 2011, edition of Science. These images come from observations of Horowitz crater, at 32 degrees south latitude, 141 degrees east longitude, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In time, the series spans from late summer of one Mars year to mid-summer of two years later. The images taken from oblique angles have been adjusted so that all steps in the sequence show the scene as if viewed from directly overhead. The features that extend down the slope during warm seasons are called recurring slope lineae. They are narrow (one-half to five yards or meters wide), relatively dark markings on steep (25 to 40 degree) slopes at several southern hemisphere locations. Repeat imaging by HiRISE shows the features appear and incrementally grow during warm seasons and fade in cold seasons. They extend downslope from bedrock outcrops, often associated with small channels, and hundreds of them form in rare locations. They appear and lengthen in the southern spring and summer from 48 degrees to 32 degrees south latitudes favoring equator-facing slopes. These times and places have peak surface temperatures from about 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to 80 degree above zero Fahrenheit (about 250 to 300 Kelvin). Liquid brines near the surface might explain this activity, but the exact mechanism and source of the water are not understood.


This series of images shows warm-season features that might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today. Evidence for that possible interpretation is presented in a report by McEwen et al. in the Aug. 5, 2011, edition of Science. These images come from observations of a steep crater slope in the Terra Cimmeria region of Mars, at 38.8 degrees south latitude, 159.5 degrees east longitude, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In time, the series spans from the end of summer of one Mars year to mid-summer of two years later. The images taken from oblique angles have been adjusted so that all steps in the sequence show the scene as if viewed from directly overhead. The features that extend down the slope during warm seasons are called recurring slope lineae. They are narrow (one-half to five yards or meters wide), relatively dark markings on steep (25 to 40 degree) slopes at several southern hemisphere locations. Repeat imaging by HiRISE shows the features appear and incrementally grow during warm seasons and fade in cold seasons. They extend downslope from bedrock outcrops, often associated with small channels, and hundreds of them form in rare locations. They appear and lengthen in the southern spring and summer from 48 degrees to 32 degrees south latitudes favoring equator-facing slopes. These times and places have peak surface temperatures from about 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to 80 degree above zero Fahrenheit (about 250 to 300 Kelvin). Liquid brines near the surface might explain this activity, but the exact mechanism and source of the water are not understood.


This series of images shows warm-season features that might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today. Evidence for that possible interpretation is presented in a report by McEwen et al. in the Aug. 5, 2011, edition of Science. These images come from observations of Newton crater, at 41.6 degrees south latitude, 202.3 degrees east longitude, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In time, the series spans from early spring of one Mars year to mid-summer of the following year. The images have been adjusted to correct those taken from oblique angles to show how the scene would look from directly overhead. The features that extend down the slope during warm seasons are called recurring slope lineae. They are narrow (one-half to five yards or meters wide), relatively dark markings on steep (25 to 40 degree) slopes at several southern hemisphere locations. Repeat imaging by HiRISE shows the features appear and incrementally grow during warm seasons and fade in cold seasons. They extend downslope from bedrock outcrops, often associated with small channels, and hundreds of them form in rare locations. They appear and lengthen in the southern spring and summer from 48 degrees to 32 degrees south latitudes favoring equator-facing slopes. These times and places have peak surface temperatures from about 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit to 80 degree above zero Fahrenheit (about 250 to 300 Kelvin). Liquid brines near the surface might explain this activity, but the exact mechanism and source of the water are not understood. The series is timed to dwell two seconds on the first and last frames and one second on intermediate frames, though network or computer performance may cause this to vary.