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10 days or so ago we gave news of the loss of the martian rover Spirit, that had lost its ability to communicate with Earth. In contrast, at the start of this month, its twin, Opportunity, reached a milestone: 30 kilometres covered since it began its multi-year mission, 50 times the distance initially planned.
In its interminable wander on the surface of the red planet, Opportunity has encountered and photographed a great many natural structures, including numerous meteorite craters like that shown above. This is a very recent structure, less than 100,000 years old (spontaneously referred to as "Skylab" after the first American space station), created by the impact of a meteorite a few tens of centimetres in diameter, capable nonetheless of leaving a 9 metre diameter crater.
Opportunity arrived at Skylab on 12th May, while making its way to its next important target of study, the large crater Endeavour, 22 km in diameter. There, the rover will stop for a long while, before continuing its interminable march towards new objectives.
If it manages to stay operative for over another year, in the summer of 2012 it will be joined by the new mobile laboratory "Curiosity", that apart from being far more capable in analysis of soil and atmosphere, will also provide images of the martian environment with the most realistic colours ever, those that an astronaut would see if he found himself on the red planet.
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