A HiRISE image of Santa Maria crater and the rover Opportunity. Click for larger (~247 k). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

The crater you see in the image is Santa Maria on Mars.  The image was taken by the High Resolution Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on March 9, 2011.

If you look at about 4:00 you will see the arrow pointing to the Mars Rover Opportunity, click the image if you are having trouble seeing it.

This image has been cropped, to see the full versions and caption – click here.

The caption title is Opportunity is Still Smiling, the same cannot be said for the Rover Spirit.  It doesn’t look good folks, Spirit has been quiet for over a year and not only that, most heaters were turned off over the Martian winter subjecting the electronics to the most extreme cold thus far in the mission.

In the past few weeks Spirit went through the period where its location received the maximum amount of sunlight, it was hoped there might be some communication.  Nothing.  The peak sunlight occurred on March 10 and on March 15 mission managers sent commands for Spirit to use UHF relays and a back up transmitter to communicate with the orbiting spacecraft.

“The commands we are sending starting this week should work in a multiple-fault scenario where Spirit’s main transmitter is no longer working and the mission clock has lost track of time or drifted significantly,” said JPL’s John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity.

If nothing is heard in the next month or few months the mission will switch to a single rover mission.