page_title: Opportunity (rover)
section_title: Panoramas
hierarchical_section_title: Opportunity (rover) / Images / Panoramas
caption_attribution_description: English: PIA21707: Mars Rover Opportunity's View of 'Orion Crater' (Enhanced Color) https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21707 NASA's Opportunity Mars rover passed near this small, relatively fresh 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 rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) recorded this view, presented in enhanced color to make differences in surface materials more easily visible. 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. This view combines multiple images taken through three different Pancam filters. The selected filters admit light centered on wavelengths of 753 nanometers (near-infrared), 535 nanometers (green) and 432 nanometers (violet). 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. For more information about Opportunity's adventures on Mars, visit https://mars.nasa.gov/mer.
context_page_description: Opportunity, also known as MER-B or MER-1, and nicknamed "Oppy", is a robotic rover that was active on Mars from 2004 until the middle of 2018. Launched on July 7, 2003, as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover program, it landed in Meridiani Planum on January 25, 2004, three weeks after its twin Spirit touched down on the other side of the planet. With a planned 90-sol duration of activity, Spirit functioned until it got stuck in 2009 and ceased communications in 2010, while Opportunity was able to stay operational for 5111 sols after landing, maintaining its power and key systems through continual recharging of its batteries using solar power, and hibernating during events such as dust storms to save power. This careful operation allowed Opportunity to exceed its operating plan by 14 years, 46 days, 55 times its designed lifespan. By June 10, 2018, when it last contacted NASA, the rover had traveled a distance of 45.16 kilometers.
  Mission highlights included the initial 90-sol mission, finding extramartian meteorites such as Heat Shield Rock, and over two years of exploring and studying Victoria crater.
context_section_description: A selection of panoramas from the mission:
caption: Panorama of Orion crater (enhanced color; April 26, 2017)[64]
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