This scene shows the Murray Ridge portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater on Mars. The ridge is the work area for the sixth Martian winter of the Mars Exploration Rover, <i>Opportunity</i>.
<p>The ridge rises about 40 metres above the surrounding plain, between Solander Point at the north end of the ridge and Cape Tribulation, beyond Murray Ridge to the south. This view does not show the entire ridge. The visible ridge line is about 10 metres above the rover's location when the component images were taken.
</p><p>The scene sweeps from east to south. The planar rocks in the foreground at the base of the hill are part of a layer of rocks laid down around the margins of the crater rim. At this location, <i>Opportunity</i> is sitting at the contact between the Meridiani Planum sandstone plains and the rocks of the Endeavour Crater rim. On the upper left, the view is directed about 22 kilometres across the centre of Endeavour crater to the eastern rim.
</p><p><i>Opportunity</i> landed on Mars in January 2004 and has been investigating parts of Endeavour's western rim since August 2011.
</p><p>The scene combines several images taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on Opportunity during the 3,446th Martian day, or sol, of the mission's work on Mars (3 October 2013) and the following three sols. On Sol 3,451 (8 October 2013), <i>Opportunity</i> began climbing the ridge. The slope offers outcrops that contain clay minerals detected from orbit and also gives the rover a northward tilt that provides a solar-energy advantage during the Martian southern hemisphere's autumn and winter.
</p><p>The rover team called this feature Murray Ridge in tribute to Bruce Murray (1931-2013), an influential advocate for planetary exploration who was a member of the science teams for NASA's earliest missions to Mars and later served as director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena.
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This view is presented in approximately true colour, merging exposures taken through three of the Pancam's colour filters, centred on wavelengths of 753 nanometres (near-infrared), 535 nanometres (green) and 432 nanometres (violet).
NASA/JPL
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA17582">Jet Propulsion Laboratory</a>