Opportunity and Spirit Reach Out
February 2, 2004
Each of NASA's two Mars Exploration Rovers is using its
versatile robotic arm for positioning tools at selected
targets on the red planet.
Also, a newly completed 360-degree color panorama from
Opportunity shows a trail of bounce marks coming down the
inner slope of the small crater where the spacecraft came to
rest when it landed on Mars nine days ago.
Opportunity extended its arm early today for the first time
since pre-launch testing. "This was a great confirmation for
the team," said Joe Melko of NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Melko is mechanical systems
engineer for the arm, which is also called the instrument
deployment device.
Mission controllers at JPL are telling Opportunity to use two
of the instruments on the arm overnight tonight to examine a
patch of soil in front of the rover. A microscope on the arm
will reveal structures as thin as a human hair and a
Moessbauer Spectrometer will collect information to identify
minerals in the soil, according to plans. Tomorrow, the
rover will be told to turn the turret at the end of the arm
in order to examine the same patch of soil with another
instrument, the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer, which
reveals the chemical elements in a target.
Spirit is now in good working order after more than a week of
computer-memory problems. It is brushing dust off of a rock
today with the rock abrasion tool on its robotic arm. After
the brushing, Spirit will use the microscope and two
spectrometers on the arm to examine the rock.
"We're moving forward with our science on the rock
Adirondack," said JPL's Jennifer Trosper, Spirit mission
manager. Reformatting of Spirit's flash memory was postponed
from today to tomorrow. The reformatting is a precautionary
measure against recurrence of the problem that prevented
Spirit from doing much science last week.
Later in the week, Spirit will grind the surface off of a
sample area on Adirondack with the rock abrasion tool to
inspect the rock's interior. After observations of Adirondack
are completed, the rover will begin rolling again. "We are
already strategizing how to drive far and fast," Trosper
said.
Observations by each rover's panoramic camera help scientists
choose where to drive and what to examine with the
instruments on each rover's arm. Dr. Jeff Johnson, a rover
science team member from the U.S. Geological Survey's
Astrogeology Team, Flagstaff, Ariz., said that 14 filters
available on each rover's panoramic camera allow the
instrument to provide much more information for identifying
different types of rocks than can be gleaned from color
images such as the new panoramic view.
"By looking at the brightness values in each of these
wavelengths, we can start to get an idea of the things we're
interested in, especially to unravel the geological history
of these landing sites," Johnson said.
The main task for both rovers in coming weeks and months is
to find clues in rocks and soil about past environmental
conditions, particularly about whether the landing areas were
ever watery and possibly suitable for sustaining life.
Each martian day, or "sol" lasts about 40 minutes longer than
an Earth day. Spirit begins its 31st sol on Mars at 1:23
a.m. Tuesday, Pacific Standard Time. Opportunity begins its
11th sol on Mars at 1:44 p.m. Tuesday, PST. The two rovers
are halfway around Mars from each other.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration
Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. Images and additional information
about the project are available from JPL at
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov and from Cornell
University, Ithaca, N.Y., at http://athena.cornell.edu.
