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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Opportunity _ First View Inside Endurance!

Posted by: lars_J May 1 2004, 04:56 AM

Check it out!

http://qt.exploratorium.edu/mars/opportunity/navcam/2004-04-30/1N136619354EFF2000P1985L0M1.JPG

Posted by: SickNick May 1 2004, 10:20 AM

My quick and dirty assembly of the images here - 1 Meg jpg - needs rotation and a bit more care. But for now....

http://www.earthsci.unimelb.edu.au/mars/Endurance_Pan_NH.jpg

Well,

If Opportunity goes in there, it ain't ever coming back out!

Oh for a space suit and a rock hammer...

Thinking aloud: There may be some spectacular scale cross-bedding in the upper layers, which *could* be interpreted as fossil craters, healed over by more layering. hard to say - need to think about this in 3D!

On Earth, the knobby bulges in the wall would be fossil reefs. Not sure what they are here.

I guess we'll do a lot of circling and sniffing to see what can be seen all around the rim, while sizing-up that potential death-slide into the pit.

Oh, and the features inside the crater *are* dunes, not exposed bedrock.