JPL’s Opportunity Rover Captures Image of 9-11 Memorial on Mars

The panoramic camera and navigation camera of JPL’s Opportunity Mars rover captured an image of a memorial to victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers on the 10th anniversary of the tragedy on Mars.

The memorial, made from aluminum recovered from the site of the twin towers in weeks following the attacks, serves as a cable guard on a tool on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity and bears an image of the American flag.

The view combining exposures from two cameras on the rover is online at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14750.

The memorial is on the rover’s rock abrasion tool, which was being made in September 2001 by workers at Honeybee Robotics in lower Manhattan, less than a mile from the World Trade Center.

Opportunity’s camera captured the image during the 2,713th Martian day of the rover’s work on Mars. Opportunity completed its three-month prime mission on Mars in April 2004 and has worked for more than seven years since then in bonus extended missions.

Additional information about Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, is online at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/rovers.