Mars rover Daily Updates -Spirit Making Ground - Opportunity-A Beautiful Grind

NASA - JPL ^ | 2-24-2004 | NASA/JPL

[Phil V.]

Daily Updates - February 24, 2004

Spirit Status for sol 51 Making Ground posted Feb. 24, 2 pm PST

To inspire a morning "run" on sol 51, which ended at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday, PST, Spirit woke up to Vangelis’ "Chariots of Fire." The rover deployed its arm, took microscopic images of the soil in front of it and then proceeded toward its target, "Middle Ground." Spirit drove 30 meters (98.4 feet), breaking its own record for a single-sol traverse. Along the way, Spirit paused to image rocks on both sides of the drive path with its panoramic camera.

The auto-navigational software that drove the last 12 meters (39.4 feet) of the traverse to the "Middle Ground" target warned Spirit that the slope into the hollow that houses it was too steep (according to parameters set by rover engineers). Spirit then paced along the rim, looking for a safe way down. Unable to locate a secure path into the crater before the sol ended, Spirit ended up facing slightly west of north instead of northeast, as called for by the plan. This orientation will reduce the amount of data the rover can return (due to interference between the UHF antenna and items on the rover equipment deck), but it will be corrected in the coming sols.

As of today, Spirit has moved 183.25 meters (601.21 feet) and is now roughly 135 meters (442.91 feet) from its landing site, Columbia Memorial Station.

The intent for the next several sols will be to drive Spirit into "Middle Ground" and take a full panorama of the surrounding area to identify scientifically interesting rocks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Opportunity Status for sol 30 A Beautiful Grind posted Feb. 24, 11:15 am PST

On sol 30, which ended at 2:56 a.m. Tuesday, February 24, Opportunity performed its first rock abrasion tool operation on a rock target known as 'McKittrick Middle Rat' at the El Capitan site inside the crater. The tool shaved the rock over a period of two hours, grinding into a total depth of about 4 millimeters (.16 inches).

The auspicious day began with the song 'Rock'n Me' by Steve Miller and some miniature thermal emission spectrometer sky surveys and sky stares to study the atmosphere. After completing these activities, Opportunity took a short siesta to recharge its batteries. The rover has been doing a lot of science work at night, and the season on Mars is changing to winter, so the rover has less energy to work with than it did earlier in the mission. The martian days are getting shorter and the sun angle is not allowing either rover to power up the solar panels as much as in the past.

Opportunity woke up from its nap at 11:30 Local Solar Time on Mars to run through the series of commands required to retract the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and close its doors; take several microscopic images of another nearby rock abrasion tool target called 'Guadalupe;' flip the wrist; take a microscopic image of "McKittrick Middle Rat;" and place the rock abrasion tool on its target to run at 13:00 Local Solar Time.

After the abrasion tool was retracted, a series of microscopic images of the scene were taken, and the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer was successfully placed into the abrasion tool's hole late in the day.

Some additional panoramic camera, miniature thermal emission spectrometer readings, and hazard avoidance camera imagery was completed through the day.

The plan for sol 31, which will end at 3:36 a.m. Wednesday, February 25, is to continue getting long Moessbauer readings of the rock abrasion tool hole and to prepare the tool for more work again on sol 33 or 34.

[RightWhale]

Just another form of welfare for PhDs and engineers. I think your perspective is skewed

Fund the tip of the pyramid and the whole structure will be raised. The base is a huge thing, but invest in the top and the base will take care of itself.

[Darksheare]

Looks like the edge of a crinoid type fossil, or something similar.

[Monty22]

What the HELL is that part that looks like a freaking worm!

[Monty22]

That looks sooo unnatural, and you know what?? It looks a lot like the 'bugs' in the freaking meteor thing they had awhile ago too (much bigger I know, but wow)

Jeezus guys.

[Monty22]

Who invited you to take a leak in the punchbowl? Just stop complaining

[FireTrack]

NASA has got to report on what we're seeing in these images very soon I'm thinking. Nothing new since yesterday afternoon however. I just checked their site again...

[FireTrack]

I just found this on www.space.com, seem to be having power problems. One would think that they'd spend more time here capturing more detailed images of the interesting objects in this grind rather than risking another setup. If they find something significant, then this alone would make both missions a success. Just a few hours to grab more detailed images... What would that hurt???

Ok, I'm through complaining... ;-)

February 25, 2004 02:53 pm ET

Team Wrestles with Opportunity's Battery Problem
Mission controllers for the Opportunity Mars rover are preparing new sleep orders for the robot in order to save at least some power being leached by a faulty heater.

The heater, located on Opportunity's robotic arm -- also called its Instrument Deployment Device (IDD) -- has been stuck on since the rover rolled off its landing pad in January. Opportunity is currently 32 days into its mission on Mars.

"The amount of power per day is slowly dropping due to seasonal change and dust collecting on the solar panels," said Richard Cook, a project manager of the Mars Exploration Rover program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The power loss from the heater is gradually becoming a significant drain on Opportunity's available resources, he added.

Project engineers are testing a deep sleep program that will shut down all of Opportunity's night process, including an alarm clock and other electronics. Once uploaded next month, the software should starve the stuck heater of power at night, cutting the energy drain by two-thirds.

Opportunity's power supply has been the recent focus of attention by mission managers after a task-full day of drilling and other studies earlier this week ate into the robot's energy reserves. The rover spent the bulk of yesterday recharging its batteries, pausing for just three hours before going back to sleep at noon Mars local time.

The rover is scheduled to complete Mössbauer spectrometer measurements of its current target, a hole cut by its Rock Abrasion Tool into the surface of the rock El Capitan, and drill at least one more hole before moving on to a new target.

Meanwhile, the Spirit rover -- Opportunity's twin on Mars -- also had a light day at its Middle Ground location in Gusev Crater. The robot moved 10 feet (3 meters) forward and took panoramic images that will be used by scientists to select science targets from among a number of interesting rocks in the area. Many of the rocks were long ago ejected from the modest-sized Bonneville Crater toward which the rover is headed.

Spirit is scheduled to make more remote sensing observations of Middle Ground tomorrow, as well as use its robot arm to look at material collected by its deck magnets.

-- Tariq Malik

[Past Master Councilor]

OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Opportunity (from occupied ga)Gets an Attitude Adjustment - sol 31, Feb 25, 2004



On sol 31, which ended at 3:36 a.m. Wednesday, February 25, Opportunity awoke to "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and his Comets. At 1:00 a.m. Local Solar Time, Opportunity sent data to Earth via the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and then sent another whopping 145.6 megabits of data at 3:30 a.m. Local Solar Time via the Mars Odyssey orbiter.

During the morning hours, Opportunity collected data with the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer for five hours and took measurements with its miniature thermal emission spectrometer from inside its newly formed hole that was created on sol 30 by the rock abrasion tool. Later, Opportunity retracted and closed the door of the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer and swapped the Moessbauer spectrometer into the hole made by the abrasion tool for a leisurely 24-hour observation.

Opportunity also updated its "attitude knowledge," which fine-tunes the rover's information about its exact location and position on Mars. Updating the attitude knowledge allows the rover to more accurately point the high gain antenna toward Earth, which increases the communications capabilities. The attitude adjustment also enables scientists and engineers to point instruments onboard Opportunity more precisely at targets of interest, such as particular rocks and patches of soil. To adjust the attitude knowledge, engineers have the rover turn the panoramic camera to the Sun and watch the Sun travel across the sky for 15 minutes. The rover is then smart enough to take the Sun movement data collected from the panoramic camera to calculate its own location in the universe…..on Mars. The rover gathers attitude knowledge errors over time as it drives and uses the robotic arm extensively, but it only needs an attitude adjustment about once a week or after driving long distances.

Around 12:15 pm Local Solar Time, Opportunity went to sleep to recharge its batteries from its strenuous rock abrasion tool activities on sol 30, but reawakened briefly at 4 p.m. Local Solar Time and again in the evening to send data to Earth via additional overflights by the Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey orbiters.

The plan for sol 32, which ends at 4:15 a.m. Thursday, February 26, is to take another unique set of Moessbauer measurements to look at the rover-created hole in a different spectrum. The goal is to then crawl slightly forward on sol 33 to position Opportunity to use the rock abrasion tool on the upper target of the El Capitan/McKittrick area.

[Monty22]

Their silence on these pics is deafening. I assume it's that they want to get it right before they say anything. But c'mon, this stuff's a massive deal now.

[ElkGroveDan]

Martian meal worms maybe?

[null and void]

Just look at the middle image.

(if your eyes are crossed properly you'll see three side by side images)

[FireTrack]

Nothing would be wrong with NASA saying they've seen some unusual items in the grind. It doesn't have to be "proof life existed on Mars headlines". If that is what they're after then it explains the silence and reluctance to say anything.

[null and void]

Looks like a foraminifera...

[ASA Vet]

Playing music for a machine is nuts, but possibly harmless.
My only problem would be if the rovers are storing those music files.
If they ignore the music it's no biggie.

[null and void]

Am I the only one here that thinks it's more than a little strange to play wake up music to a computer?

Yes. We think you're strange for thinking that...

[FireTrack]

"Martian meal worms maybe?"

Very big hypothetical "IF" they are biological fossils then probably they existed at the bottom of a body of water and devoured decaying matter instead of meal, which would require intelligent life raising fields of grain and mills to grind the grain into mill. :-) However, that is possible! ;-)

[FireTrack]

Here we go!

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Microscopic photographs of a Mars rock taken by NASA's Opportunity rover have triggered excitement among scientists, even if they aren't unanimous on exactly what they're seeing.

The images, posted on Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars rovers Web site, show a highly detailed surface on a rock dubbed "El Capitan" that has been undergoing examination by the robot geologist.

"They are just very beautiful things and it's not at all clear that we understand what we're looking at," mission official Rob Manning said in a teleconference with reporters on Monday.

"There is a lot of enthusiasm, probably as much enthusiasm as we've ever had by the science team and a lot of intense discussions over these last several days."

The $820 million mission of Opportunity and the twin rover Spirit is aimed at finding geologic evidence that dusty, frigid Mars was once a wetter place where life could have taken hold.

"El Capitan" was designated the top target for close-up study after a general assessment of the outcropping from a distance. The layered rock generated debate about whether it was formed volcanically, by deposition of sediments, or involved mineral growth or wind-created structures.

"Once we got close, the images are much more striking, and although the science team is very reluctant to make any decisions about what they're looking at, there's a lot of information in the pictures they've been looking at," Manning said.

It was not certain when scientists would comment on their findings. A teleconference was set for Tuesday and the next formal press conference was scheduled for Thursday at JPL in Pasadena.

Manning predicted that Opportunity would spend "a fair amount of time" at the outcrop before leaving the area to search for other sites to explore in an area known as Meridiani Planum.

"There's just too much excitement, too much to see," he said.

On the other side of Mars in Gusev crater, Spirit had left a trench it dug last week for study of subsurface soil and was en route to a new site dubbed "Middle Ground."

[Monty22]

I showed some people at work the pics, without telling them what it was, and said it was a rock, and what they thought of it.

They said it looked like fossil clams or worms. I explained it's from Mars, and they were stunned.

[Indie]

Very interesting stuff we are seeing. As another poster said, non-biologic sources for what we are seeing ARE out there, so one must temper ones enthusiasm.

yeah they're out there...but rare...and not so many in one spot. The odds of running into so many "anomolies" that are non-organic but look organic in the first place this thing digs are astronomical. My guess: organic. I'd bet the house on it.