Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2019

O pportunity passed near this small, relatively fresh crater in April 2017, dur- ing the 45 th anniversary of the Apollo 16 mission to the Moon. The rover team chose to call it Orion Crater, after the Apollo 16 lunar module. The crater's diameter is about 90 feet (27 meters). From the small amount of ero- sion or filling that Orion Crater has experienced, its age is estimated at no more than 10 million years. It lies on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. For com- parison, Endeavor is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter and more than 3.6 billion years old. [NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Univ./Arizona State Univ.] O pportunity used its panoramic camera to take the images that were combined into this mosaic view of the rover. The downward-looking view omits the mast on which the camera is mounted. It shows Opportunity's solar panels to be relatively dust-free. The images were taken during Op- portunity's 322 nd and 323 rd Martian days, or sols (Dec. 19 and 20, 2004). [NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell]