NASA Mars Rover Images Honor Apollo 12

Feature Nov. 18, 2010

NASA Mars Rover Images Honor Apollo 12

The full version of this story with accompanying images is at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-388&cid=release_2010-388

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has visited and
photographed two craters informally named for the spacecraft that carried men to the moon
41 years ago this week.

Opportunity drove past "Yankee Clipper" crater on Nov. 4 and reached "Intrepid crater" on
Nov. 9. For NASA's Apollo 12, the second mission to put humans onto the moon, the
command and service module was called Yankee Clipper, piloted by Dick Gordon, and the
lunar module was named Intrepid, piloted by Alan Bean and commanded by the late Pete
Conrad. The Intrepid landed on the moon with Bean and Conrad on Nov. 19, 1969, while
Yankee Clipper orbited overhead. Their landing came a mere four months after Apollo 11's
first lunar landing.

This week, Bean wrote to the Mars Exploration Rover team: "I just talked with Dick Gordon
about the wonderful honor you have bestowed upon our Apollo 12 spacecraft. Forty-one
years ago today, we were approaching the moon in Yankee Clipper with Intrepid in tow. We
were excited to have the opportunity to perform some important exploration of a place in the
universe other than planet Earth where humans had not gone before. We were anxious to give
it our best effort. You and your team have that same opportunity. Give it your best effort."

Rover science team member James Rice, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center,
Greenbelt, Md., suggested using the Apollo 12 names. He was applying the rover team's
convention of using names of historic ships of exploration for the informal names of craters
that Opportunity sees in the Meridian Planum region of Mars.

"The Apollo missions were so inspiring when I was young, I remember all the dates. When
we were approaching these craters, I realized we were getting close to the Nov. 19
anniversary for Apollo 12," Rice said. He sent Bean and Gordon photographs that
Opportunity took of the two craters.

The images are available online at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13593 and
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13596. Intrepid crater is about 20 meters (66
feet) in diameter. Yankee Clipper crater is about half that width.

After a two-day stop to photograph the rocks exposed at Intrepid, Opportunity continued on
a long-term trek toward Endeavour crater, a highly eroded crater about 1,000 times wider
than Intrepid. Endeavour's name comes from the ship of James Cook's first Pacific voyage.

During a drive of 116.9 meters (383.5 feet) on Nov. 14, Opportunity's "odometer" passed 25
kilometers (15.53 miles). That is more than 40 times the driving-distance goal set for
Opportunity to accomplish during its original three-month prime mission in 2004.

Mars Exploration Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., said, "Importantly, it's not how far the rovers have gone but how much
exploration and science discovery they have accomplished on behalf of all humankind."

At the beginning of Opportunity's mission, the rover landed inside "Eagle crater," about the
same size as Intrepid crater. The team's name for that landing-site crater paid tribute to the
lunar module of Apollo 11, the first human landing on the moon. Opportunity spent two
months inside Eagle crater, where it found multiple lines of evidence for a wet environment
in the area's ancient past.

The rover team is checking regularly for Opportunity's twin, Spirit, in case the increasing
daily solar energy available at Spirit's location enables the rover to reawaken and resume
communication. No signal from Spirit has been received since March 22. Spring began last
week in the southern hemisphere of Mars.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars
Exploration Rovers for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more
information about the rovers, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

-end-

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Nancy Neal Jones 301-286-0039
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
nancy.n.jones@nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown 202-358-1726
NASA Headquarters, Washington
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

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