Opportunity heads towards the Endeavour crater. Photo: NASA.

The Mars Exploration rover Opportunity faces a two-year trek to reach the Endeavour crater. 

NASA is sending the Mars rover across the surface of the planet to examine a crater that is much larger than anything it has previously explored. The rover climbed out of the Victoria Crater earlier this month.

Opportunity will have to travel seven miles to reach the Endeavour crater, matching the total distance it has travelled on Mars since it landed in 2004. This mission to Mars was only intended to last three months.

Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, said: “We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway. This crater is staggeringly large compared to anything we’ve seen before.”

Reaching the Endeavour would provide the chance to look inside the crater that has a total diameter of 13.7 miles. Scientists are hoping that the broader range of rocks in the crater will yield more in-depth information about the stacks of rock layers.

“This is a bolder, more aggressive objective than we have had before,” said John Callas, the project manager for both Mars rovers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion in California. “It’s tremendously exciting. It’s new science. It’s the next great challenge for these robotic explorers.”

For images and information about NASA’s Opportunity rover, visit: www.nasa.gov/rovers ^[1]