Opportunity Rover on Mars Takes on Its Steepest Slope Yet

On March 10, Opportunity — which has been exploring the Red Planet since January 2004 — drove on a 32-degree slope, the steepest ever tackled on Mars. The goal of this mountaineering expedition was to get Opportunity close enough to study a rock target near the crest of a Red Planet landform dubbed Knudsen Ridge, which is part of a larger feature called Marathon Valley (because it's where Opportunity's odometer passed 26.2 miles, or 42.2 kilometers — the distance of a