Mars Rover Opportunity’s View of ‘Orion Crater’ (Stereo)

This view of a small, relatively fresh crater on Mars combines images from the left eye and right eye of the Panoramic Camera (Pancam) on NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, to appear three-dimensional when seen through blue-red glasses with the red lens on the left. The rover paused beside the crater in April 2017, during the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 16 mission to the moon. The rover team chose to call it "Orion Crater," after the Apollo 16 lunar module.

The crater's diameter is about 90 feet (27 meters). From the small amount of erosion or filling that Orion Crater has experienced, its age is estimated at no more than 10 million years. It lies on the western rim of Endeavour Crater. For comparison, Endeavor is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter and more than 3.6 billion years old.

The component images were taken on April 26, 2017, during the 4,712th Martian day, or sol, of Opportunity's work on Mars. The rover's location on that sol, during its approach toward "Perseverance Valley" on the Endeavour rim, is indicated on a map at https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/mission/tm-opportunity/images/MERB_Sol4711_1.jpg as the endpoint of the Sol 4711 drive.

Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke flew in the Orion lunar module to and from the first human landing in the lunar highlands while Ken Mattingly orbited the moon in the command module, Casper. On the moon, Young and Duke investigated Plum Crater, which is approximately the same size as Mars' Orion Crater.