Mars Rover Hi-Tails It Out of Crater

Aug. 27, 2008 -- NASA has decided it's time for an old Mars rover to get a move on and climb out of the big hole in the ground it has been exploring for nearly a year.

The Mars rover Opportunity is expected to be out of Victoria crater by week's end, though its pictures and chemical scans of ancient rocks taken during the sojourn will provide fodder for scientists unraveling the mystery of what happened to the planet's water for years to come.

Understanding the role water played in Mars' history is believed to be key to learning if the planet ever supported life.

"It's been a fruitful year," project scientist Bruce Banerdt with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Discovery News. "We've been able to verify a lot of our hypotheses. There haven't been any marquee discoveries, no first-of-its-kind...but science goes forward by lots of differently sized steps, not just the headline-grabbing discoveries."

That was the case when Opportunity almost immediately discovered that its landing spot in an equatorial region known as Meridiani Planum was once covered with a shallow, acidic ocean.

Opportunity touched down in January 2003. A twin robotic scout named Spirit settled on the other side of the planet.

In Victoria, Opportunity discovered the same types of sulfate-laced sandstones found during its last campaign in the nearby but smaller Endurance Crater, though Victoria's walls showed subtle chemical differences as the rover progressed deeper and deeper into the basin.

Impact craters give scientists the opportunity to peel back layers of geologic history by examining how older, deeper rock compares with rock closer to the planet's surface.

"We could see just by looking at the images that some layers looked different," Banerdt said. "Some were coarser grain, some finer grain. It gives us clues to the conditions of the environment."