[NormsRevenge]

'Burns Cliff' Color Panorama

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity captured this view of "Burns Cliff" after driving right to the base of this southeastern portion of the inner wall of "Endurance Crater." The view combines frames taken by Opportunity's panoramic camera between the rover's 287th and 294th martian days (Nov. 13 to 20, 2004). This is a composite of 46 different images, each acquired in seven different Pancam filters.

It is an approximately true-color rendering generated from the panoramic camera's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer filters.

The mosaic spans more than 180 degrees side to side. Because of this wide-angle view, the cliff walls appear to bulge out toward the camera.

In reality the walls form a gently curving, continuous surface.

[NormsRevenge]

Water-Signature Mineral Found by Spirit

This spectrum, taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit's Moessbauer spectrometer, shows the presence of an iron-bearing mineral called goethite in a rock called "Clovis" in the "Columbia Hills" of Mars.

Goethite contains water in the form of hydroxyl as a part of its structure.

By identifying this mineral, the examination of Clovis produced strong evidence for past water activity in the area that Spirit is exploring.