MRO looks at Opportunity

This was posted as one of my "links for the week", but it's cool enough to mention on its own: the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is taking very high resolution images of the martian surface since reaching its final orbit; the pictures show a few centimeters per pixel. That's about as good as the best images of Earth you can see in Google Maps.

And one of the recent images shows rover Opportunity standing by the rim of Victoria crater. The rover is clearly visible, and you can even see the shadow of the camera mast and the tracks it left while getting there. You can see a detail of the image here; click on it to see the full image and the press release.

The ability of seeing the same terrain from two different view points will be very useful to scientists, both in analysing science results and in plotting future movements of the rovers. Come to think of it, it's quite possible that the MRO will be able to find the ill-fated Beagle, the British lander that was lost in late 2003, which may help pin-point the causes of the loss.