Opportunity: Landing

Researchers used NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to find a water-related mineral on the ground that had been detected from orbit, and found it in the dark veneer of rocks on the rim of En...

This image from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's panoramic camera is an approximate true-color rendering of the exceptional rock called "Berry Bowl" in the "Eagle Crater" outcrop.

This image superimposes an artist's concept of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on the rim of Victoria Crater. It is done to give a sense of scale.

This is the 3-D anaglyph showing a microscopic image taken of soil featuring round, blueberry-shaped rock formations on the crater floor at Meridiani Planum, Mars. This image was taken on the 13th ...

The rock abrasion tool on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit ground two holes in a relatively soft rock called "Wooly Patch" near the base of the "Columbia Hills" inside Gusev Crater on Mars.

Download a PDF of the Mars Exploration Rover Fact Sheet.

The aeroshell protects the rover from fiery temperatures as it enters the Martian atmosphere in January, 2004.

This July 7, 2017, scene from the Navcam on NASA's Opportunity Mars rover shows a view from the upper end of "Perseverance Valley" on the inner slope of Endeavour Crater's rim. At left, the valley...

This scene from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity catches "Pillinger Point," on the western rim of Endeavour Crater, in the foreground. The eastern rim of t...

This view of a rock called "Block Island," the largest meteorite yet found on Mars, comes from the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

Stowed in the nose cone of this Delta II rocket, the Mars Exploration Rover blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It's destination: the planet Mars.

While driving eastward toward the northwestern flank of "McCool Hill," Spirit's wheels churned up the largest amount of bright soil discovered so far in the mission.

This beautiful scene reveals a tremendous amount of detail in Spirit's surroundings at a place called "Winter Haven," where the rover spent many months parked on a north-facing slope in order to ke...

This is a zoomed in view on Spirit 's "Lookout" panorama on the drive up to the summit "Husband Hills."

This false-color image taken by the panoramic camera onboard the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity highlights the spherules that speckle the rock dubbed Stone Mountain

A self-portrait of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity taken by the rover's panoramic camera (Pancam) in late March 2014 shows effects of recent winds removing much of the dust from the rover...

This mosaic image shows an extreme close-up of round, blueberry-shaped formations in the martian soil near a part of the rock outcrop at Meridiani Planum called Stone Mountain

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded this view of a crater informally named "Freedom 7" shortly before the 50th anniversary of the first American in space: astronaut Alan Shepard's fl...

Artist's concept of controlling the rover from Earth, scientists drive the rover along Mars' surface inspecting geological features.

Road trip! This compilation of images from hazard-avoidance cameras on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity between January 2004 and April 2015 shows the rover's-eye-view of the Martian marath...

On March 20, 2004, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity used a wheel to dig a trench revealing subsurface material beside the lander hardware that carried the rover to the surface of Mars 55 M...

This scene from NASA's Mars rover Opportunity shows "Wharton Ridge," on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The ridge's name honors the memory of astrobiologist Robert A. Wharton (1951-2012). The ...

The rover launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida is the "Lightning Capital of the United States." Launching a spacecraft safely is challenging enough. Learn how the Force of Nature intercepted the ...

An elongated crater called "Spirit of St. Louis," with a rock spire in it, dominates this stereo view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity.

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