Spirit's Surroundings Beckon in Color Panorama
January 12, 2004
The first 360-degree color view from NASA's Spirit Mars
Exploration Rover presents a range of tempting targets from
nearby rocks to hills on the horizon.
"The whole panorama is there before us," said rover science-
team member Dr. Michael Malin of Malin Space Science
Systems, San Diego. "It's a great opening to the next stage
of our mission."
Spirit's flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., continues making progress toward getting
the rover off its lander platform, but expected no sooner
than early Thursday morning. "We're about to kick the baby
bird out of its nest," said JPL's Kevin Burke, lead
mechanical engineer for the rover's egress off the lander.
The color panorama is a mosaic stitched from 225 frames
taken by Spirit's panoramic camera. It spans 75 frames
across, three frames tall, with color information from shots
through three different filters. The images were calibrated
at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., home institution for
Dr. Jim Bell, panoramic camera team leader.
Malin said, "Seeing the panorama totally assembled instead
of in individual pieces gives a much greater appreciation
for the position of things and helps in developing a sense
of direction. I find it easier to visualize where I am on
Mars when I can look at different directions in one view.
For a field geologist, it's exactly the kind of thing you
want to look at to understand where you are."
Another new image product from Spirit shows a patch of
intriguing soil near the lander in greater detail than an
earlier view of the same area. Scientists have dubbed the
patch "Magic Carpet" for how some soil behaved when scraped
by a retracting airbag.
"It has been detached and folded like a piece of carpet
sliding across the floor," said science-team member Dr. John
Grotzinger of Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge.
Spirit's next step in preparing to drive onto the surface of
Mars is to sever its final connection with the lander
platform by firing a cable cutter, which Burke described as
"an explosive guillotine." The planned sequence after that
is a turn in place of 115 degrees clockwise, completed in
three steps over the next two days. If no obstacles are seen
from images taken partway through that turn, drive-off is
planned toward the northwestern compass point of 286
degrees.
Spirit landed on Mars Jan. 3 after a seven-month journey.
Its task is to spend the next three months exploring rocks
and soil for clues about whether the past environment in
Gusev Crater was ever watery and suitable to sustain life.
Spirit's twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, will
reach Mars Jan. 24 PST (Jan. 25 Univeral Time and EST) to
begin a similar examination of a site on a broad plain
called Meridiani Planum, on the opposite side of the planet
from Gusev Crater.
NASA JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover
project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington. For
information about NASA and the Mars mission on the Internet,
visit: http://www.nasa.gov. Additional information about
the project is available on the Internet at:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov. Mission information is
also available from Cornell University, at:
http://athena.cornell.edu.
