Mars rover Opportunity is about to dive into the trenches.

The six wheeled rover is in excellent shape within its crater landing site at Meridiani Planum. The robot has officially completed a remote sensing campaign to study a rock outcrop exposed along the craters rim, stopping at three different observation outposts: Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie.

Matt Wallace, JPLs Opportunity Mission Manager, reported today in a telephone press briefing that the robot has exercised, for the first time, a "high order" self-navigation capability.

Using its own vision and software smarts to sense and map reference points, Opportunity can ascertain for itself where it sits within local surroundings. That ability will be particularly helpful, Wallace said, for the rover to better maneuver up, down, and across crater slopes.

Opportunity has also performed the first nighttime session using its Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES). "We got our first opportunity to check out our night vision," Wallace said. Results of that scan to see in infrared the heat emitted by rock and soil is now being digested by scientists, he said.

Once at Trough, the rover is to initiate three days of labor in the harsh environment, carving a trench within the martian surface.

A "pre-trench" is the first order of business. That activity uses Opportunitys out-stretched robot arm equipped with science gear to study the surface to be trenched.

This will be followed by the rover using one of its six wheels that spins back and forth, digging into Mars surface. After a trench has been created, Opportunity is to deploy its suite of instruments into the scooped out area.

The site selected is rich in hematite, Wallace said. That mineral has been found in abundance at Meridiani Planum. On Earth, this type of iron oxide mineral usually, but not always, forms in association with water.

On this first trench, Wallace told SPACE.com , engineers will be conservative in using the rovers wheel. No telling what kind of material -- perhaps bedrock -- might be underneath the top surface covering.

The plan is to spin one of the rovers front wheels in reverse, move the rover a tad, then forwardrepeating this pattern to carve a trench in the soil about half the wheels diameter -- about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in depth.

"We have a lot of confidence in how this trenching system is going to behave," Wallace said. This will be a first, he added, to help grasp what is below the top layer of the soil.

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