Opportunity arrives at Intrepid crater

The Mars rover Opportunity continues its long journey across the flat plains of Meridiani, coming ever closer to its next major destination, the huge Endeavour crater, which is still several months away. In the meantime though, here are some nice views of Intrepid crater, which is much, much smaller but still interesting of course.


Credit: NASA/JPL

Additional images (raw) are here. In some, portions of Endeavour’s rim can be seen on the horizon. While Intrepid is only a matter of metres wide, Endeavour is about 22 kilometres (14 miles) across. The edges of its rim are more like mountains. Before we get there, there is also Santa Maria crater along the way, significantly larger than Intrepid, but still much smaller than Endeavour. This region near Endeavour is very flat and featureless for the most part, so not much to see otherwise, but once we get there, the views will be amazing.