Engineers estimated it would take about 200 "drive" sols--roughly another year, given that the rover doesn't drive every sol--to travel the 8 km to the entry point to the base of Aeolis Mons, or "Mount Sharp" as the team calls it (after beloved Caltech geologist Robert Sharp).
The project comes after Nasa's Curiosity rover successfully landed on Aeolis Palus on Mars last month after being launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011.
of Mare Sirenum and Mare Cimmerium, and hence traversing Memnonia, Zephyria and Aeolis. (ALPO's name--Valhalla--has not been adopted by the Section because the patches comprising it were already named on Ebisawa's chart.) (23) In 2005 the Lick observers clearly noticed that it consisted of many small patches.
In mid-September 2014, the rover reached the foothills of Aeolis Mons, a three-mile-high layered mountain nicknamed "Mount Sharp" in honor of the late Caltech geologist Robert Sharp.
The bulk of that time will be spent making its way up the slopes of Aeolis Mons, more widely known as "Mount Sharp" in honor of pioneering planetary geologist Robert P.