NASA's Mars rover Opportunity, which landed on the Red Planet in 2004, is now a movie star with the release of an 8-minute time-lapse movie of the rover's 11 years of journeying across the Martian surface.
The video was put together by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using 11 years of images collected by the rover's Hazard-Avoidance cameras.
There's a soundtrack, too; the scientists have created audio from data from the rover's accelerometer, with louder sounds synchronized to Opportunity's time in rougher terrain and softer, muffled sounds as the rover travel's through stretches of sand.
The movie of the rover's travels covers the period between January 2004, when it landed on Mars, and April 2015, a time span that saw Opportunity travel 26.2 miles - the same distance as a marathon for runners on Earth.
Opportunity and its twin rover Spirit landed on the Red Planet as part of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project, for missions planned to last 3 months.
Their longevity has surprised mission scientists; Spirit did science work for 6 years before it stopped operating, and Opportunity is still going strong.
Controllers are preparing Opportunity for the next leg of its travels. After three weeks in a hibernation mode because the position of the sun made communicating with Earth difficult, the rover will move again in July to trek into "Marathon Valley," dubbed that because the rover completed the 26.2 mile distance just as it arrived there.
The valley, some 300 yards long, it thought to feature areas of exposed clay that might give more insights into water flowing on Mars in the planet's past.
Opportunity will spend the Martian winter in a sunny stretch of the valley in a study of the surrounding geology.
NASA scientists have made some changes in how Opportunity hands the data it collects and sends back to Earth, as a result of problems with onboard flash memory where the rover would hold data for transmission the next day after shutting down for the Martian night.
A problem last year with the rover's nonvolatile flash memory saw random resets that resulted in loss of telemetry, project scientists at JPL say.
The rover has been instructed to not use flash memory and to transmit data immediately upon collecting it instead of attempting to retain it overnight.
That won't interfere with its ability to do useful science, says Opportunity Project Manager John Callas.
"Each day we transmit data that we collect that day," he says. "Flash memory is a convenience but not a necessity for the rover."
