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NASA has released a new photo taken by his laboratory on wheels, Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It shows, among other things traces of the rover and riding on a slope, “Knudsen Ridge” near the southern edge of the “Marathon Valley.” What is this picture interesting, is visible in the distance, dusty whirlwind, so-called “dust devil”, a phenomenon often on the Red Planet observed.
The image was taken with a camera navigation probe (Navcam) on March 31 this year, in 4332-the Martian “day” stay the Opportunity rover on Mars. The probe was at that moment behind the arduous climb up the slope, “Knudsen Ridge”, during which overcame a record in the history of test red planet slope reaching 32 degrees.
Visible in the background trumpet dust is a phenomenon often on Mars observed, as related to earth with the movement of the heated spinning column of “air”, with each gripping and lifting up dust particles. Often had the opportunity to photograph them, staying in the region of Gusev Crater for Opportunity twin rover Spirit, the pictures from Opportunity appeared much less frequently.
Portal space.com notes that although the image could be seriously considered as a proof escape the rover before whirlwind, with no escape in practice there can be no question. Jeep is moving no faster than 160 meters per hour, and radio signals travel to Earth and back for 8 minutes. This excludes the possibility of a really fast response.
Valley in the region of the whereabouts of the rover is not without reason has been given the name “Marathon”. Opportunity arrived there beating from the beginning of his mission was a distance of over 42 kilometers. This is a new record for distance anywhere defeated by a probe from Earth. By the summer of 2014 years it held the Soviet probe Lunokhod 2, which in 1973 ran on the lunar surface 39 km.
Grzegorz Jasinski
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