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.
The golf cart-sized robot is now overlooking Victoria Crater, showing us rugged walls with layers of exposed rock and a floor blanketed with dunes. Take a look at this magnificent panorama, taken from 800 meters distance.
Both Mars robots got recently a software update comparable to a Y2K fix : both rovers are nearing 1000 days of operational status, and the original software only had 3 digits for the current day. Opportunity will the next weeks be exploring the Victoria crater, searching the crater rim to see if there's any way it can get down into the crater. For geologists, deeper usually means farther back in time. By going down deeper, in a place five times bigger than the last craters, we hope to see the history of Mars.
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