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Exploring Meridiani Planum

Meridiani Planum on Mars
NASA's Opportunity rover has spent 13 years exploring a small region of Meridiani Planum which has a rather ordinary appearance as seen by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

NASA’s Opportunity rover has spent 13 years exploring a small region of Meridiani Planum which has a rather ordinary appearance as seen by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Other portions of Meridiani are much more interesting, with well-exposed layered bedrock eroded into strange patterns.

The University of Arizona, Tucson, operates HiRISE, which was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

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The map below projected here at a scale of 50 centimeters (19.7 inches) per pixel.
[The original image scale is 54.1 centimeters (21.3 inches) per pixel (with 2 x 2 binning); objects on the order of 162 centimeters (63.8 inches) across are resolved.] North is up.

Meridiani Planum on Mars