page_title: Timeline of Opportunity (rover)
section_title: Santa Maria crater
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of Opportunity (rover) / Mission timeline / 2010 / Santa Maria crater
caption_attribution_description: English: Colour Panorama of 'Santa Maria' Crater on Mars, taken by the Opportunity rover. Original caption from NASA: "NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity is spending the seventh anniversary of its landing on Mars investigating a crater called "Santa Maria," which has a diameter about the length of a football field. This scene looks eastward across the crater. Portions of the rim of a much larger crater, Endurance, appear on the horizon. The panorama spans 125 compass degrees, from north-northwest on the left to south-southwest on the right. It has been assembled from multiple frames taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity during the 2,453rd and 2,454th Martian days, or sols, of the rover's work on Mars (Dec. 18 and 19, 2010)." Tony Greicius &amp; NASA official Brian Dunbar.
context_page_description: Opportunity is a robotic rover that was active on the planet Mars from 2004 to 2018. Launched on July 7, 2003, Opportunity landed on Mars' Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004 at 05:05 Ground UTC, three weeks after its twin Spirit, also part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission, touched down on the other side of the planet. While Spirit became immobile in 2009 and ceased communications in 2010, Opportunity exceeded its planned 90 sol duration of activity by 16 years, 91 days. Opportunity continued to move, gather scientific observations, and report back to Earth until 2018. What follows is a summary of events during its continuing mission.
  Opportunity started in Eagle crater in 2004, literally landing inside on the crater basin, then it travelled outward making its way to Endurance crater. After this it went to Victoria crater, all the way making many panoramas, measurements, studying rocks and smaller craters, even what are thought to be meteorites. It then traveled to Endeavour crater, where it has been making its way south along the Western rim.
context_section_description: In July 2010, it was announced that the Opportunity team would use the theme of names given to places visited
  by British Royal Navy Captain, Lieutenant James Cook, in his 1769–1771 Pacific Ocean voyage in command of HMS Endeavour, for informal names of sites at Endeavour Crater. These would include "Cape Tribulation" and "Cape Dromedary", "Cape Byron" (the most easterly point of the Australian mainland), and "Point Hicks" (the part of the Australian mainland first sighted by the Endeavour in 1770).
  On sol 2353 (September 8, 2010), the halfway point of the 19 kilometers (12 mi) journey between Victoria crater and Endeavour crater was reached.
  In November the rover spent a few days imaging a 20 meters (66 ft) crater called Intrepid while navigating through a field of small impact craters. On sol 2419  November 14, 2010 total odometry passed the 25 kilometers (16 mi) mark. Average solar array energy production in October and November was about 600 watt-hours.
  On sol 2449 (December 15, 2010) the rover arrived at Santa Maria and spent several weeks investigating the 90 meters (300 ft) wide crater. The results from Opportunity were compared to data taken from orbit by the CRISM instrument, a spectrometer, on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. CRISM had detected water-bearing minerals at Santa Maria crater, and the rover helped further analyze this. Opportunity drove farther in that Martian year (that is about 2 Earth years), than in any previous year.
caption: Santa Maria Crater panorama
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