Looking Back at Arena of Exploration
Date: 29 Aug 2008

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed out of "Victoria Crater" following the tracks it had made when it descended into the 800-m-diameter (half-mile-diameter) bowl nearly a year earlier.

The rover's navigation camera captured this view back into the crater just after finishing a 6.8-m (22-foot) drive that brought Opportunity out onto level ground during the mission's 1,634th Martian day, or sol (28 Aug. 2008).

For scale, the distance between the parallel tracks left by the rover's wheels is about 1 m (39 inches) from the middle of one track to the middle of the other. After getting past the top of the inner slope of the crater, the Sol 1634 drive also got through a sand ripple where the tracks appear deepest.

Last Update: 13 Sept. 2012 (AMB)

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech