Since August 2008, Mars Exploration Rover-B Opportunity has been travelling toward this crater. Craters that have been explored by Opportunity include Victoria crater which is 750 meters (0.47 miles) in diameter, Endurance crater which is 130 meters (0.08 miles) in diameter, and Eagle crater which is 22 meters (0.01 miles) in diameter.
On March 7, 2009 (sol 1,820), Opportunity first saw the rim of Endeavour after driving about 3.2 kilometers (2.0 mi) since it left Victoria in August 2008. Opportunity also saw Iazu crater, which is about 38 kilometers (24 mi) away and about 7 kilometers (4.3 mi) in diameter. At that time, Opportunity was 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from Endeavour as the Martian crow flies, but to avoid hazards, it was estimated that it would take about 30% more driving distance than that to reach Endeavour. Based on the amount of time it had taken to drive from Victoria, it was estimated that this journey would take over one Martian year (23 months). On May 5, 2010, to avoid hazardous dune fields along the direct path between Victoria and Endeavour, the charted route between the two craters was extended to an estimated 19 kilometers.
On September 8, 2010, it was announced that Opportunity had reached the halfway point of the 19-kilometer journey between Victoria crater and Endeavour crater. By June 28, 2011, Opportunity was just under 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from landfall at the rim of Endeavour crater.
On August 4, 2011, Opportunity was only 120 metres (390 ft) from the rim of Endeavour, and on August 9, 2011 Opportunity arrived at the west rim near Spirit Point to study outcrops never seen before. It explored the northwest outcrops of the the crater for about 2 Earth years, before heading south Solander Point.
Read more about this topic: Endeavour (crater)
Famous quotes containing the word opportunity:
“We either praise or blame according to whether the one or the other provides the greater opportunity to let our power of judgment shine.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysands to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defence. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Never miss an opportunity to allow a child to do something she can and wants to on her own. Sometimes we’re in too much of a rush—and she might spill something, or do it wrong. But whenever possible she needs to learn, error by error, lesson by lesson, to do better. And the more she is able to learn by herself the more she gets the message that she’s a kid who can.”
—Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)