NASA Rover Captures Images of Mars Surface Over Three-Year Trek -- VIDEO

By National Journal staff

October 11, 2011 | 10:43 a.m.

This image from the navigation camera on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows the view ahead on the day before the rover reached the rim of Endeavour crater. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A new video from NASA shows 309 images from a rover's three-year voyage across the surface of Mars.

From September 2008 to August 2011, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity traveled from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater. At the end of each day that the rover drove across the surface, the team snapped a photo of the landscape.

The sound you hear in the video is made by speeding up data from the rover's accelerometers. "The sound represents the vibrations of the rover while moving on the surface of Mars," Paolo Bellutta, a rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement.

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