Mars Rover Video: Images From Three-Year Trek Compiled Show Vehicle's Journey (VIDEO)

A new video from NASA gives a bit of an idea what it's like to drive on Mars -- albeit very slowly.

Opportunity, one of the Mars rovers, recently completed a 13-mile trek from Victoria crater to Endeavour crater. The journey took a total of nearly three years, and at the end of each day that Opportunity drove, the rover took a picture using its navigation camera.

The video, available above, is a compilation of the 309 images from the days that Opportunity drove. As you'll see, the rover had to take some detours to avoid what NASA calls "large expanses of treacherous terrain."

According to NASA, the sound in the video is from data from the Opportunity's accelerometers, instruments used to measure the rover's proper acceleration. NASA sped up the data 1,000 times to make it audible, and the sound corresponds to the image featured, giving us an idea of the day's terrain.

"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. "When the sound is louder, the rover was moving on bedrock. When the sound is softer, the rover was moving on sand."

According to the Associated Press, the Opportunity -- and its twin rover, Spirit -- arrived on Mars in 2004. NASA lost contact with Spirit in March 2010.

The Mars rover Curiosity, which is the size of a car, will launch later this year with a planned arrival next August.

In August, NASA reported the discovery of what could be evidence of flowing water on the red planet.

WATCH: Video at top.

Comments

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

04:10 PM on 10/13/2011

HEY! I think I saw a squatch!!

[portfolio]

02:03 PM on 10/13/2011

The terrain certainly give me the impression that there has been wind and water at work
forming it.

[chrysostomos]

12:52 PM on 10/13/2011

It's awe inspiring to think that we have been able to place two vehicles on a planet millions of miles away, navigate them remotely and generate this visual trace of our progress less than a century after the first transatlantic flight.

[classicfinisher]

12:06 PM on 11/05/2011

yep... and if some little green guy hypes it up and starts some extreme off road action, I'll fall out of my chair.......

[chrysostomos]

08:15 PM on 11/05/2011

Nice! that was too funny. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing:) Cheers.

[mamacat]

11:11 AM on 10/13/2011

Two thoughts come to mind:

this has to be one of the most amazing technological achievements of mankind, and,

at less than 1% of the pressure at Earth's sea level, the Martian atmosphere is still thick enough to give the illusion of being on Earth.

[ReliStuPhD]

01:35 AM on 10/13/2011

Yeahhhhh, that's NOTHING like an idea of what it's like to drive on Mars. More like an idea of what it's like when you string together 309 shots of more or less random spots on Mars.

[NewtonSnookers]

12:11 AM on 10/13/2011

OMG! Didn't anyone notice the TRACK MARKS on the Martian surface???!!!??? Plain as day! THERE'S SOMETHING ON MARS!!!!!!!

[mamacat]

11:11 AM on 10/13/2011

And it goes everywhere we go!