Opportunity Knocks on Mars

NASA’s Martian explorer Opportunity reached its first destination inside the cavernous Victoria Crater yesterday and prepared to get to work drilling into bright rock layers to collect data. The six-wheeled robot last month began the precarious decline into the crater, headed for a shiny piece of bedrock that scientists think is a relic of the ancient Martian surface, the AP reports.

Opportunity is now parked 40 feet below the rim at a 25-degree tilt—the steepest angle it has encountered since landing on the planet—while its sister rover Spirit explores a plateau on the other side of Mars for evidence of a volcano. The two robots, which landed on the planet three years ago, were originally slated for a three-month mission; this summer they survived a fierce dust storm that cut their power for weeks. (More Opportunity stories.)