page_title: Santa Maria (crater)
section_title: Exploration
hierarchical_section_title: Santa Maria (crater) / Exploration
caption_attribution_description: English: NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity approached Santa Maria Crater in December 2010. With a diameter of about 90 meters (295 feet), this crater is slightly smaller than Endurance Crater, which Opportunity explored for about half a year in 2004. This image of Santa Maria Crater was taken by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The rover team plans to use Opportunity for investigating Santa Maria for a few weeks before resuming the rover's long-term trek toward Endeavour Crater. One planned target area is at Santa Maria's southeast rim. The red circle marked there on Figure 1 indicates the pixel size and location of an observation by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that has piqued researchers' interest. The spectrum recorded by CRISM for this spot, unlike the spectrum recorded for the place indicated by the blue circle on the floor of the crater, suggests what might be a water-bearing sulfate mineral. Although Opportunity has detected such minerals on the surface during its nearly seven years on Mars, none have been detected from orbit at a place visited by Opportunity.
context_page_description: Santa Maria is an impact crater on Mars, located at 2.172°S, 5.445°W within the Meridiani Planum extraterrestrial plain, lying situated within the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle region.
  This geological feature was first visited by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. It sits north west of the much larger Endeavour crater. The crater measures about 80–90 m across. Its name has not been officially recognized by the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature.
context_section_description: Opportunity arrived at the crater on December 15, 2010. The rover was positioned at the south eastern rim, where it took several images and prepared for the oncoming Solar Conjunction. The last communication made before the conjunction was on February 3, 2011. Communications resumed around a week later, and the rover performed several in-situ studies of the rocks "Luis de Torres" and "Ruiz Garcia". The rover left the crater on March 22, heading eastwards towards Endeavour crater.
caption: Santa Maria crater from orbit, by HiRise
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