Space Shuttle Challenger Crew Memorialized on Mars
January 28, 2004
NASA announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars
Opportunity rover in honor of the Space Shuttle Challenger's
final crew. The area in the vast flatland called Meridiani
Planum, where Opportunity landed this weekend, will be
called the Challenger Memorial Station.
The seven-member crew of Space Shuttle Challenger was lost
when the orbiter suffered an in-flight breakup during launch
Jan. 28, 1986, 18 years ago today.
NASA selected Meridiani Planum as a landing site because of
extensive deposits of a mineral called crystalline hematite,
which usually forms in the presence of liquid water.
Scientists had hoped for a specific landing site where they
could examine both the surface layer that's rich in hematite
and an underlying geological feature of light-colored
layered rock. The small crater in which Opportunity alighted
appears to have exposures of both, with soil that could be
the hematite unit and an exposed outcropping of the lighter
rock layer.
Challenger's 10th flight was to have been a six-day mission
dedicated to research and education, as well as the
deployment of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite-B
communications satellite.
Challenger's commander was Francis R. Scobee and the mission
pilot was Michael J. Smith. Mission specialists included
Judith A. Resnik, Ellison S. Onizuka and Ronald E. McNair.
The mission also carried two payload specialists, Gregory B.
Jarvis and
Sharon Christa McAuliffe, who was the agency's first teacher
in space.
Opportunity successfully landed on Mars January 25 (Eastern
and Universal Time; January 24 Pacific Time). It will spend
the next three months exploring the region surrounding what
is now known as Challenger Memorial Station to determine if
Mars was ever watery and suitable to sustain life.
Opportunity's twin, Spirit, is trailblazing a similar path
on the other side of the planet, in a Connecticut-sized
feature called Gusev Crater.
A composite image depicting the location of the Challenger
Memorial Station can be found on the Web at:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/rover-images/jan-28-2004/captions/image-1.html
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is a
division of the California Institute of Technology, also in
Pasadena. JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rover mission
for NASA's Office of Space Science in Washington, D.C.
Additional information about the project is available from
NASA, JPL and Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., on the
Internet at: http://www.nasa.gov/,
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and http://athena.cornell.edu.
