NASA’s Opportunity Rover tackles its steepest slope to date

After more than a decade on the Red Planet, you would think that there would be little that the folks at NASA would ask the Mars Rover Opportunity to accomplish, but you would be wrong, at the agency recently attempted to have the vehicle climb its steepest slope yet.

According to Space.com and Spaceflight Now, Opportunity was directed to a 32 degree slope on March 10 and attempted to scale a hill near the crest of the area known as Knudsen Ridge. While it would have been the steepest climb ever successfully scaled by a rover, it did fall a bit short of its goal and had to be rerouted after spilling its wheels and slipping.

While officials at the agency prepared for potential slippage by increasing the number of wheel rotations during the attempted climb, the slippage would up being to great and they were forced to abandon the attempt. While the wheels had turned enough to carry Opportunity 66 feet (20 m) without slippage, in reality it was only able to make it roughly 3.5 inches (9 cm) up the hill.

It was the third attempt to scale Knudsen Ridge, NASA said in a statement, and following this latest failure, the rover team made the difficult decision to abandon this part of the mission and to re-route the rover to another target. Even so, Opportunity was able to break its own record for the steepest slope ever driven by a Mars rover, according to the agency.

‘Three-month’ mission entering its 12th year with no end in sight

In the days and weeks that followed, Opportunity was sent backwards down the hill, then went approximately 200 feet (60 m) to the southwest, towards a different rock target in the region of Mars known as Marathon Valley. Data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suggest that both rock targets contain clay minerals, which only form in the  presence of water.

Opportunity, which landed on Mars in January 2004, was sent to the Red Planet to search for evidence that its surface once contained liquid water, according to Space.com. Its mission was originally supposed to only last three months, but over the past 12 years, it has found plenty of evidence of water on Mars, breaking the off-world distance driving record in the process.

It shows no signs of stopping, either. As NASA explained, the rover has been investigating the western edge of the 14 mile (22 km) wide Endeavor Crater since 2011, and agency officials see no end in sight. “We are looking forward to completing the work in Marathon Valley this year and continuing onward with Opportunity,” said Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

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Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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