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.

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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.

[Liberty Tree Surgeon]

Given that you make the same comments on every Mars thread, perhaps everyone on this thread can acknowledge your remarks and agree to agree/disagree as they see fit, so that no more of these science threads will be hijacked by your political discussions and resulting flame fests. That way, people who want to discuss the latest pictures or data can do so, and people who want to argue about their tax dollars being wasted can look for your threads elsewhere. Sound good? Or do you believe in your right to dissent so much that you're willing to do so to the extent that you may be hardening others' views, rather than persuading anyone?

LTS

[RightWhale]

Dry them and use them as fuel in cookstoves.

[RightWhale]

am I wrong

Oil cost is the point. We're not going to run out, but cost will increase. It's not just political like it was in '76. Demand is increasing worldwide and production is barely keeping up. Gasoline has been increasing fairly steadily for the past 5 years. Will the price of gasoline ever return to $0.19 where it was when I started driving my own car?

[FireTrack]

Oil cost is the point.

Actually, supply and demand is the point. Given an alternative to current energy resources, transportation means and so forth, it's conceivable that fossil fuel prices would plummet.

As you probably know, gasoline was a byproduct of the kerosene industry in the beginning and dumped in large pits because there was no market for the stuff. Btw, did you buy that $0.19 gallon gasoline in Alabama?

[js1138]

...there is nothing we can do to stop the crash.

I think that attitudes towards atomic energy will change suddenly and dramatically when oil prices start climbing due to reduced supply. My city was once home to a project called Offshore Power. It failed after Three mile Island, but it could be ramped up in a hurry if national survival depended on it. Offshore power could produce hydrogen and electricity.

I imagine the politics of this will be treacherous, and their might be considerable pain and social upheaval, but it will happen. France is as left wing as nations get, and most of their electric energy comes from nukes.

[Phil V.]

No new microscopic images from mars so far today. I guess if you want a new view ya gotta get it yourself. For those of you with red/blue 3-d glasses here is my first successful glyph creation. It is a 3-d glyph of a portion of the grind area . . . including "the thing" - 2/3 up and near the right edge . . .

[Darksheare]

Well, you can see the artifacts of grinding.
But that doesn't explain the 'thing' there.
I have a fossil of a trilobyte that has one "one layer down" from teh exposed one.
It resembles that 'thing' there in a way, edge on.
Weird.

[js1138]

A baby glassworm?

[RightWhale]

They are going to fight nuclear power until the day they are back to roasting rabbits on a spit on their cooking fire in their cave. They want the Golden Age and don't think about the other side: the Golden Age was an age of extreme scarcity.

[skinkinthegrass]

Thx...w/o the "special" mag. glasses, the red/blues are GREAT...the grind "looks" interesting, the 2/3 thing looks like a ????..I don't know, what it looks like...a track/impression. :)

[ElkGroveDan]

Phil, you rock.

[RightWhale]

We have until 2017 at the latest and that is if everything breaks in our favor. There is nothing that can be done to stop this. We are going off the cliff as early as 2007 no matter what. It's 30 years too late to do anything about it. We can't even afford to build enough windmills and solar panels now, and that will be impossible at any price in 10 years.

[RightWhale]

That is da bomb. However, you need to get NASA to send every tax-paying family a set of red-green glasses.

[adaven]

My 4 year old daughter helped me out with this one!

How to make your own red/blue 3D glasses:
Go to your kitchen and get a peice of plastic-wrap, big enough to cover both eyes. With red and blue Crayola markers color the left-half red and the right-half blue (or cyan).

Peice of cake! And it works!! ;-)

[Phil V.]

Give credit to JPL. I found a page with easy instructions. . . .GOT PHOTOSHOP?

Make Your Own 3-D Images

[ElkGroveDan]

I have PS, and I actually have created analglyphs before. For some reason its not working for me now. When I drop in the second layer it just becomes the whole image. No color, no transparency. I must have some setting clicked wrong.

[Phil V.]

Read JPL's instructions and go through step by step. It worked for this ol' pharmer!

[Phil V.]

I'm having too much fun . . .

[FireTrack]

Great job Phil, those round radial engine looking things stand out now as well.

[FireTrack]

You had me thinking about this all evening... If memory serves me, POV mileage increases aren't going to help that much since the largest consumer of fossil fuels is industry (I could be wrong here).

Also, one of America's greatest Achilles heels is our transportation systems. We're about 30 days away from famine if something happens to our trucking industry for example.

Lastly, industry is one area were government control is easier to implement. J.C. had all new power plants required to burn coal during his administration. One was built in our area and though we're plagued with high mercury levels in our local lakes (not sure that burning coal is the cause), we have a steady mid priced supply of electricity made from coal shipped from Montana. BTW, here in Louisiana, most of our natural gas is piped to the northeast. :-)

Anyway, based on the above assumptions, I believe we need to concentrate on the industrial sector in our efforts to great long term energy stability.