Hello Mars!

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[B]The exploration of Mars entered a new phase as Spirit, the first of US twin rovers, landed on the Red Planet later Saturday. [/B]  

The rover can work as a robotic field geologist and can see sharper images, explore farther and examine rocks better than anything that's ever landed on Mars, scientists at the US space agency NASA said.

Spirit, as big as a mini-car, is equipped with a suite of scientific instruments that will be used to read the geologic record at the landing site, to investigate what role water played there, and to determine how suitable the conditions would have been for life.

It has a panoramic camera at human-eye height, and a miniature thermal emission spectrometer with infrared vision that can help scientists identify the most interesting rocks.

The six-wheeled rover can watch for hazards and maneuver around them and has a deck of solar panels, about the size of a kitchen table, for power. It can drive to the selected rock and extends an arm with tools on the end.

A microscopic imager, like a geologist's hand lens, can give a close-up view of the rock's texture. Two spectrometers can identify the composition of the rock and the fourth tool, which substitutes for a geologist's hammer, can expose the fresh interior of a rock by scraping away the weathered surface layer.

Spirit will stop at Gusev Crater, a bowl bigger than the US state of Connecticut that appears to have held a lake long ago. Scientists will use the robot's instruments to seek and analyze geological evidence about past environmental conditions in the crater.

If sedimentary rocks lie on the surface, they may yield telltale clues to whether the crater ever did hold a wet environment that might have been suitable for sustaining life, scientists said.

From: English China

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http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/g ... irit/20040106c.html

First Color Image from Spirit

This is the first color image of Mars taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. It is the highest resolution image ever taken on the surface of another planet.

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http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/n ... ases/20040109a.html

January 09, 2004

NASA's Spirit, the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers on the martian surface, has stood up and extended its front wheels while continuing to delight its human partners with new information about its neighborhood within Mars' Gusev Crater.

Traces of carbonate minerals showed up in the rover's first survey of the site with its infrared sensing instrument, called the miniature thermal emission spectrometer or Mini-TES. Carbonates form in the presence of water, but it's too early to tell whether the amounts detected come from interaction with water vapor in Mars' atmosphere or are evidence of a watery local environment in the past, scientists emphasized.

"We came looking for carbonates. We have them. We're going to chase them," said Dr. Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, leader of the Mini-TES team. Previous infrared readings from Mars orbit have revealed a low concentration of carbonates distributed globally. Christensen has interpreted that as the result of dust interaction with atmospheric water. First indications are that the carbonate concentration near Spirit may be higher than the Mars global average.

After the rover drives off its lander platform, infrared measurements it takes as it explores the area may allow scientists to judge whether the water indicated by the nearby carbonates was in the air or in a suspected ancient lake.

"The beauty is we know how to find out," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the mission. "Is the carbonate concentrated in fluffy dust? That might favor the atmospheric hypothesis. Is it concentrated in coarser material? That might favor the water hypothesis."

Spirit accomplished a key step late Thursday in preparing for rolling off the lander. In anticipation, the flight team at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., played Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up" as wake-up music for the sixth morning on Mars, said JPL's Matt Wallace, mission manager. In the following hours, the rover was raised by a lift mechanism under its belly, and its front wheels were fully extended. Then the rover was set back down, raised again and set down again to check whether suspension mechanisms had latched properly.

Pictures returned from the rover's navigation camera and front hazard-identification camera, plus other data, confirmed success.

"We are very, very, very pleased to see the rover complete the most critical part of the stand-up process," Wallace said. Next steps include retracting the lift mechanism and extending the rear wheels.

A tug on airbag tendons by the airbag retraction motor Thursday evening did not lower puffed up portions of airbag material that are a potential obstacle to driving the rover straight forward to exit the lander. The most likely path for driving off will be to turn 120 degrees to the right before rolling off. "This is something we have practiced many times. We are very comfortable doing it," Wallace said.

The earliest scenario for getting the rover off the lander, if all goes smoothly, is Spirit's 13th or 14th day on Mars, Jan. 16 or 17.

"We're proceeding in a measured, temperate way," said JPL's Peter Theisinger, project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover project. "This is a priceless asset. It is fully functioning. It is sitting in a beautiful scientific target. We're not going to take any inappropriate risks."

While preparing to learn more about what Mars rocks are made of, Christensen announced an educational project to involve school children and other people in getting rocks from all over Earth for comparison. "Send me your rocks and we'll see if there are rocks in your back yard that are similar to what we're seeing on Mars," he said. Information about how to send rocks to Arizona State University is on the rovers' Web site at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.

Spirit's twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, will reach Mars on Jan. 25 (Universal Time and EST; Jan. 24 PST). The rovers' main task is to spend three months exploring for clues in rocks and soil about whether past environments near the landing sites were ever watery and possibly suitable to sustain life.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington.


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Guy Webster (818) 354-5011
JPL
Donald Savage (202) 358-1547
NASA Headquarters, Washington

NEWS RELEASE: 2004-13

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While preparing to learn more about what Mars rocks are made of, Christensen announced an educational project to involve school children and other people in getting rocks from all over Earth for comparison.

It made a deepest impression on me. I was surprised to find the American use such an unthinkable way to collect the wisdom and inspire the potentialities hidden among crowds, especially children. The occasion chance may change a child life greatly. To see a world in a grain of sand, I saw the advantage of the western education system. I recalled the launch of Shenzhou-5 last year. A few children knew it and took care of it in my surroundings. The government at first even will not open the exactly time of it launching to the public and forbid the live rebroadcast by CCTV.

Many people I knew in china and many developing countries are trying their best to reach American or other developed countries to live better. American had no other country for them to try, they had to put their eyes on the outer space^_^. “Many films were talked about how to conquer the outer space and the future of the world by Hollywood. And many things described in seventies or sixties came into true today.” Said by Yun who is the principle of New Orient school. When I opened cable TV, I find the most popular sitcom is about Qing Dynasty. Almost all the history of the dynasty came to familiar with us.

Wait for the more pictures and the news come from Mars.

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http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/spa ... .contact/index.html

Thursday, January 22, 2004 Posted: 8:48 PM EST (0148 GMT)

(CNN) -- The Spirit rover has stopped transmitting data from Mars, NASA mission controllers said Thursday, but there were signs it is still operating at a basic level.

NASA scientists now have received a basic communication tone from the rover indicating it is alive but the solid flows of data that marked its first 18 days on Mars have stopped, said Richard Cook, deputy project manager, speaking from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The tone is programmed into the spacecraft, to be emitted when there is a serious problem onboard.

"We know that we have had a very serious anomaly on the vehicle," said Pete Theisinger, manager of the $400 million Spirit mission.

"Our ability to determine exactly what has happened has been limited by our inability to receive telemetry from the vehicle," he told reporters Thursday.

To find out what went wrong, scientists need additional data. But the equipment needed to transmit that information back to Earth may be broken, sources told CNN.

The team was pursuing several scenarios, such as a possible software crash or a problem with the solar power supply.

The next opportunity for communication comes at 10:10 p.m. ET, when the Mars Global Surveyor satellite is expected to pass over the rover.

The problem, which began Wednesday, was initially blamed on rain in Canberra, Australia, where NASA operates a major radio dish that receives radio messages from space.

But several opportunities to communicate with Spirit since then have come and gone with the space agency receiving no solid data, said Cook, who managed the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander, which presumably crashed into Mars in late 1999.

Mars project engineers sent a query to the rover Wednesday afternoon and it did respond. But the craft was silent when the Mars Odyssey, a satellite in Mars orbit, passed over the six-wheeled robot, Cook said.

Later, when another red planet satellite, the Mars Global Surveyor, passed over the rover, NASA received radio communication but no data. Several opportunities came and went Thursday with no communication. But later the basic communication tone was received.

In its 18 days on the red planet, the rover's performance has been virtually flawless. JPL scientists were reviewing the early data Thursday to see if they might have missed some predictor of trouble.

--CNN's David Santucci, Miles O'Brien and Jeordan Legon contributed to this report.

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http://www.nasa.gov/vision/unive ... rtunity_update.html

Just three weeks after NASA's Spirit rover touched down on Mars, its twin Opportunity joined it on the red planet, landing shortly after midnight eastern time on Sunday, January 25.

Ground controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory erupted in cheers and applause, a replay of the celebration following the Spirit landing.


Visit the Mars Rover Site for Mission Status Updates and Photos


NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe led off a post-landing press conference with praise for the Mars Exploration Rover team, which he called "the best in the world."

Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager Peter Theisinger summed up the emotion of the night with a simple phrase: "We are two for two."

Administrator O'Keefe also pointed to engineers' success in dealing with a communications problem with Spirit that developed earlier in the week.

Just hours before Opportunity landed, engineers found a way to communicate reliably with Spirit and they're working to get Spirit's computer out of a cycle of rebooting many times a day.

Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, noted that the last few days have been an emotional rollercoaster for the Mars team. But, he said, "we resurrected one rover and saw the birth of another." Weiler also cautioned that Opportunity's landing is just "one more critical milestone" in the mission.

Opportunity's landing site is on plains called Meridiani Planum within an Oklahoma-sized outcropping of gray hematite, a mineral that -- on Earth -- usually forms in the presence of water.

Scientists plan to use the research instruments on Opportunity to determine whether the gray hematite layer comes from sediments of a long-gone ocean, from volcanic deposits altered by hot water or from other ancient environmental conditions.

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http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/26/mars.rovers/index.html
Opportunity rover sends high-detail image of landing site
Monday, January 26, 2004 Posted: 5:19 PM EST (2219 GMT)

PASADENA, California (CNN) -- While NASA's Spirit rover is in rehab, its twin, Opportunity, is sitting near rock formations on the other side of Mars that could be a "Holy Grail" for geologists, mission scientists said Monday.

Opportunity, on its third day on Mars, sent the Earth-bound mission managers an 8,000-by-3,000-pixel, 180-degree image of the area in front of it -- an image that could be zoomed in tight enough to identify individual grains of the dust covering the surface.

"This is like a Holy Grail for geologists to be able to see these incredible rocks," said Jim Bell, the team's leading camera specialist. "There's a lot more coming, and we couldn't be happier, more thrilled, with what we're seeing at this incredible landing site."

The scientists -- particularly the geologists -- are practically giddy with Opportunity's "interplanetary hole-in-one" landing spot inside a small impact crater, just a few feet from the first bedrock formation ever seen on the red planet.

The crater is about 60 feet wide and 6 feet deep, a depth that is unlikely to prevent the six-wheeled rover from leaving the crater for a wider exploration -- particularly of a significantly larger crater believed to be nearby.

Opportunity's Meridiani Planum landing site was chosen because it is believed to be full of iron-bearing hematite. The semi-precious mineral usually forms on Earth in the presence of water, leading scientists to think that water once flowed there.

Principal investigator Steve Squyres called the spot "the hematite capital of the solar system."

"There are some course gray grains, and then much finer red stuff," Squyres said, "and the other thing is, there are aggregates that have that gray color, but when you squish them they turn red. Everybody's having a wonderful time arguing about what it is."

The "squishing" effect, Squyres said, was evident in the imprints left on the surface where Opportunity bounced on landing.

More than 6,000 miles from Opportunity, the ailing Spirit, on its 23rd day on the planet, rested in the very different landscape of Gusev Crater, covered in reddish dust and scattered small rocks.

"Spirit is doing better," mission manager Jennifer Trosper said. "It's kind of like we have a patient in rehab."

Spirit operated beyond the scientists' dreams until its 18th day on Mars, when it suddenly stopped sending anything more than tones back to Earth letting scientists know it was still there. Spirit's problem was "associated with our ability to collect and maintain data" -- information needed to diagnose the rover's ailment, Trosper said.

After several days of attempts, though, the scientists made contact and persuaded Spirit to send data. What they got wasn't much -- and initially gave researchers an erroneous date of 2053.

Trosper said the problem appeared to be that the rover's flash memory couldn't handle the number of files it was storing. The jam-up, she said, apparently kept Spirit from shutting down properly and performing a number of functions that normally originated in its flash memory.

Scientists are still analyzing the data, she said, but would begin deleting unnecessary files to test that theory.

She pointed out that the scientists had thoroughly tested the rover's systems on Earth, but that the longest trial for the file system was nine days, half of the 18 days Spirit operated before running into the problem.