{"id":18916,"date":"2017-06-17T01:13:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T17:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/opportunity-rovers-roll-on-mars-eerily-echoes-apollo-16s-stroll-on-the-moon\/"},"modified":"2017-06-17T01:13:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-16T17:13:22","slug":"opportunity-rovers-roll-on-mars-eerily-echoes-apollo-16s-stroll-on-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/opportunity-rovers-roll-on-mars-eerily-echoes-apollo-16s-stroll-on-the-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity rover\u2019s roll on Mars eerily echoes Apollo 16\u2019s stroll on the moon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Orion
NASA\u2019s Opportunity rover snapped a picture of its own tread marks as it passed by Orion Crater on Mars. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ Cornell \/ ASU)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Forty-five years after the astronauts of Apollo 16 rode out on a rover to look over a crater on the moon, NASA\u2019s Opportunity rover looked over a crater on Mars \u2013 and sparked a chain of coincidences.<\/p>\n

To mark the linkage, Opportunity\u2019s science team named the feature on Mars \u201cOrion Crater.\u201d That pays tribute to the Apollo 16 astronauts, who named their lunar module Orion. It\u2019s also the name of the future NASA spaceship that may help astronauts get to Mars someday.<\/p>\n

Orion Crater is about 90 feet wide and thought to be no more than 10 million years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt turns out that Orion Crater is almost exactly the same size as Plum Crater on the moon, which John Young and Charles Duke explored on their first of three moonwalks taken while investigating the lunar surface using their lunar rover,\u201d the Planetary Science Institute\u2019s Jim Rice, a member of Opportunity\u2019s science team, said in a NASA image advisory issued today.<\/p>\n

While Young and Duke explored the Descartes Highlands for three days in April 1972, Ken Mattingly orbited the moon in the Apollo command module, christened Casper.<\/p>\n

Rice sent Duke the panorama of Orion Crater, assembled from imagery that Opportunity\u2019s Panoramic Camera captured on April 26.<\/p>\n

Duke was thrilled. \u201cThis is fantastic,\u201d he said, according to NASA\u2019s account. \u201cWhat a great job! I wish I could be standing on the rim of Orion like I was standing on the rim of Plum Crater 45 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Charles
Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke collects samples at the rim of Plum Crater on the lunar surface in 1972. The lunar rover can be seen in the background. (NASA Photo \/ John Young)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The six-wheeled, solar-powered Opportunity rover has been operating on the Martian surface for more than 13 years \u2013 which is way longer than the 90-day primary mission for which it was designed.<\/p>\n

Its younger but larger sibling, the plutonium-powered Curiosity rover, is still going strong nearly five years after it landed on the other side of the planet.<\/p>\n

Will at least one of them still be in working condition when astronauts start making footprints on Mars? It seems improbable, but based on Opportunity\u2019s staying power, I wouldn\u2019t bet against it.<\/p>\n

To get an idea what walking on Mars might be like, pull out some 3-D glasses, click on this picture for a full-size view, and scroll your way across Orion Crater:<\/p>\n

\"Orion
This view of Orion Crater combines images from the left eye and the right eye of Opportunity\u2019s Panoramic Camera. Looking at the image through red-blue glasses will produce a 3-D effect. For best results, click on this image for a full-size view. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ Cornell \/ ASU)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NASA\u2019s Opportunity rover snapped a picture of its own tread marks as it passed by Orion Crater on Mars. (NASA \/ JPL-Caltech \/ Cornell \/ ASU) Forty-five years after the astronauts of Apollo 16 rode out on a rover to look over a crater on the moon, NASA\u2019s Opportunity rover looked over a crater on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1651,367,625,190,4932,4029],"class_list":["post-18916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-apollo","tag-mars","tag-moon","tag-nasa","tag-opportunity-rover","tag-space-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}