Article Posted on : - Jul 01, 2010

A super-resolution view of the rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars. Photo: NASA.

PASADENA (BNS): NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity has shown the best images of huge Endeavour crater which reveals new details about it, a media report said.

Several high points visible along the crater's rim can be correlated with spots seen from the orbit. The image is a "super-resolution" picture, assembled by combining information from multiple photos to achieve a highly-detailed portrait of the huge Endeavour crater, according to a report by Space.com, an online space portal.

From seven years the rover is rolling across the surface of Mars, but still, the rover will take many months to reach the 13 miles (21 km) wide crater.

In January 2004, two rovers of NASA-- Opportunity and Spirit-- had landed on the red planet to travel the Martian surface for only 90 days each, but now, they have set the record for the longest mission on Mars.

Till now, the rover ‘Opportunity’ has covered more than a third of the 12-mile (19-km) route between the two craters.

Recently, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spectrometer has found clay minerals on the surface of Endeavour crater. Clay minerals, which form under wet conditions, have been found extensively on Mars from orbit, but have not yet been examined from the surface.

Additional observations with that spectrometer are helping the rover team choose which part of Endeavour's rim to visit first with Opportunity, it said.

Spots visible in the new image include "Cape Tribulation," "Cape Byron" and "Cape Dromedary."