Endeavour Crater in Context

The largest crater in this mosaic of images taken by the Context Camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is Endeavour Crater, which is 22 kilometers (14 miles) in diameter.

The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars chose to drive the rover toward Endeavour after Opportunity ascended out of smaller Victoria Crater in August 2008.

Opportunity caught its first glimpse of Endeavour's rim on March 7, 2009, during the 1,820th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars. The rover was about 12 kilometers (7 miles) from the closest point of the crater.

Annotations on Figure 1 show vectors from Opportunity's position on that date toward the portions of the rim seen in images that Opportunity's panoramic camera (Pancam) took from the Sol 1820 location. In addition to three portions of Endeavour's rim, the rim of a smaller, more distant crater, Iazu, appears faintly on the horizon in the Pancam images.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, provided and operates the Context Camera.