What an Opportunity! Mars rover reaches new milestone (CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Marsha Walton
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Nearly three years after landing on Mars, the rover "Opportunity" has reached a region of the planet that may provide the best clues yet about the history of the red planet.
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"The thing we've been looking forward to is to dig deeper into the Martian crust," said Bruce Banerdt, Mars Exploration Rover Project Scientist at the Jet pictures from the crater -- 2:56)
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But for Banerdt and about 50 other scientists working on the project, what is just as amazing as what may come out of Victoria Crater is the fact that Opportunity, and its sister rover Spirit, are still going strong nearly 1,000 days into their field work on Mars.
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"We would have been happy with 30, maybe 90 days," said Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator for Spirit and Opportunity. Arvidson is based at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
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"We built them to be very conservative, to question our commands," ...
"It's definitely good to be conservative."
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/09/28/mars.opportunity/index.html

HUGE 3D pix at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/targetFamily/Mars

more pix and info at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

slide show at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/slideshows/mer-200608/ High-quality images!

[Ian David]

1. Those WMDs have gotta be somewhere. n/t

[madinmaryland]

4. Rumsfeld: "There somewhere to the north, south, east, and west of Mars."

[thecrow]

2. This is great but

I see visions of the ever ready bunny banging those cymbals :)

[pwb]

3. still looking for water? i say next time bring a bottle.

[Astrad]

5. Is that a pen lying in the foreground? n/t

[Tunkamerica]

6. no that's just a stick

or maybe a bone

[RC]

8. Gonna haft to have a talk with the stage crew...

[Ready4Change]

9. Nah. Just some old dried up worm.

Now, lets go get some up close pictures of some Martian volcanic rock!

[Nihil]

10. Probably ...

... I use a pen or a lens-cap for scale in my field photos so why
shouldn't NASA ...
:silly:

[SlavesandBulldozers]

7. pictures of another planet.

awe inspiring.