|
|
Spirit at Home Plate
|
In this view from orbit, the pale circular shape in the center is a low plateau called "Home Plate", about 80 meters (about 260 feet) across. The bright dot just to the left of Home Plate at the 9 o'clock position is NASA's MER Spirit. North is toward the top.
The view is a portion of an image taken on June 13, 2009, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. At that date, Spirit had been embedded for more than a month in a patch of soft soil called "Troy".
During the subsequent 3 months, Spirit studied the unusually layered soil at the site while engineers used test rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to assess possible maneuvers for getting Spirit away from Troy.
The site is at 14,6° South Latitude and 175,5° East Longitude. Home Plate is in the inner basin of the Columbia Hills range, inside Mars' Gusev Crater. Spirit has been exploring the Columbia Hills and nearby features since January 2004.
|
|