Opportunity seeks wintering grounds

On 25 January, it will be 8 years since NASA’s rover began surveying the Red Planet. After a long crossing, the spacecraft has reached its new objective, the Endeavour crater. However, the winter season is just beginning and Opportunity has “sought wintering grounds”. Up until now, driving near to the equator in the southern hemisphere, the rover was not really affected by the reduced sunlight of a Martian winter (which is about twice as long as that on Earth as the Red Planet takes 686 days to orbit the Sun). But as its solar array is now covered with dust which diminishes its performance, it has been decided to put the robotic explorer on a slope, angled so as to maximise the rays received from the Sun. On Mars, the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere (which will therefore be the shortest day) is due on 30 March 2012.

NASA’s press release

Published on 6 January 2012

ALL THE LATEST NEWS

Soyuz in Guiana

This is the mythical rocket par excellence, the one that launched Sputnik, the first satellite and Gagarin, the first man in space. The CSG, Guiana Space Centre, is now one of its launch bases: a historic achievement.
Star Trek and NASA

The first episode of this famous science-fiction series was broadcast in September 1966. NASA has often made references to these programmes, as in the case of the space shuttle Enterprise, which had the same name as the spaceship in the series.
Alan Shepard, from suborbital to the Moon

50 years ago on 5 May 1961, a few weeks after Gagarin, American Alan Shepard reached space. Several years later, he was to walk on the Moon, summarising as it were the race in which the Soviet Union and the United States were competing.