First Images of Opportunity Site Show Bizarre Landscape
January 25, 2004
NASA's Opportunity rover returned the first pictures of its
landing site early today, revealing a surreal, dark landscape
unlike any ever seen before on Mars.
Opportunity relayed the images and other data via NASA's Mars
Odyssey orbiter. The data showed that the spacecraft is
healthy, said Matt Wallace, mission manager at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
"Opportunity has touched down in a bizarre, alien landscape,"
said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.,
principal investigator for the science instruments on
Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. "I'm flabbergasted. I'm
astonished. I'm blown away."
The terrain is darker than at any previous Mars landing site and
has the first accessible bedrock outcropping ever seen on Mars.
The outcropping immediately became a candidate target for the
rover to visit and examine up close.
Wallace noted that the straight-ahead path looks clear for the
rover to roll off its lander platform. The rover is facing
north-northeast.
JPL Administrator Dr. Charles Elachi said, "This team succeeded
the old fashioned way. They were excellent, they were
determined, and they worked very hard."
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology,
Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's
Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Additional
information about the project is available from JPL at
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and from Cornell University,
Ithaca, N.Y., at http://athena.cornell.edu .
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