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PIA07922: Opportunity's Sol 446 Position, with Relative Heights
This mosaic from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, presented in a vertical projection, shows the rover's position after it dug itself to wheel-hub depth in a small elongated dune on April 26, 2005.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Exploration Rover (MER) 
 Spacecraft:  Opportunity
 Instrument:  Navigation Camera 
 Product Size:  2000 x 2000 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  JPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA07922.tif (4.004 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA07922.jpg (552.8 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

figure 1 for PIA07922: Figure 1: Coding for Information About Relative Elevations
Figure 1: Coding for Information About Relative Elevations

This mosaic of navigation-camera frames from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, presented in a vertical projection, shows the rover's position after it dug itself to wheel-hub depth in a small dune during its 446th martian day, or sol (April 26, 2005). In figure 1, the colors are coding for information about relative elevations in the surrounding area. Red areas are the highest in the image, green areas the lowest. The difference between red and green is about 70 centimeters (28 inches).

The elongated dune, or ripple, is about one-third of a meter (one foot) tall and 2.5 meters (8 feet) wide.

Opportunity had completed nearly 40 meters (131 feet) of a planned 90-meter (295-foot) drive that sol when its wheels began slipping. The rover was driving backwards at the time. The rover team frequently alternates between backwards and forwards driving to keep wheel lubrication well distributed. The wheels kept rotating enough times to have covered the rest of the distance if they hadn't been slipping, but the rover eventually barely inched forward. After a turn at the end of the planned drive, Opportunity sensed that it had not turned properly and stopped moving.

The rover team spent more than a week designing and conducting tests under simulated Mars conditions on Earth before choosing the best way for Opportunity to drive out of the dune.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL

Image Addition Date:
2005-05-06