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9/11 anniversary marked by a tribute on Mars

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Sunday marked a national day of mourning in the U.S. and even around the globe. But one tribute to the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks was literally out of this world -- this picture taken Sunday of the Mars rover Opportunity.

A tool on the rover is shown adorned with an image of the U.S. flag; that tool was constructed using metal debris reclaimed from the World Trade Center rubble.

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Here’s the back story: At the time of the terrorist attacks, employees at Honeybee Robotics in lower Manhattan -- stationed less than a mile from the World Trade Center -- were working on a rock abrasion tool. It would become a key part of what was then NASA’s new Mars rover, Opportunity.

Photos: A look at the new September 11 Memorial

Employees reclaimed some aluminum from the debris and fashioned it into a cable guard on a rock-grinding tool. Then they emblazoned the cable guard with the flag as a memorial to those lost in the terrorist attacks.

On Sunday, Opportunity extended one of its arms and snapped this image.

The rock-grinding tool is about the size of a soda can, said John Callas, project manager based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena.

‘The team at Honeybee Robotics was based in New York, and they themselves were very much personally affected by the tragedies of Sept. 11. They wanted to do something,’ Callas said in an interview with The Times. ‘One way to do that was to show the finest aspects of America, the desire to do someting great, something significant, something for the benefit of all, and to do it with a piece of something taken from the World Trade Center.’

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--Rene Lynch
Twitter / renelynch

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