Posted on 09/01/2005 12:49:26 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES - From a lofty perch atop a Martian hill, NASA's Spirit rover has been soaking in a commanding view of a vast horizon since completing a difficult climb to the summit late last month.
On Thursday, scientists released the first full-color panoramic picture of the landscape taken by the rover from its lookout point, showing the rover's tracks in the dust, flat plains of the surrounding Gusev Crater region, rugged terrain dubbed "the geologic promised land" by one scientist, distant plateaus on the crater rim and more hills.
The solar-powered Spirit's yearlong ascent to the peak of Husband Hill - part of the low-ranging Columbia Hills - was a major feat for the six-wheel rover, which along with its twin, Opportunity, landed on opposite sides of Mars in January 2004 to look for evidence of the past history of water on the cold, dusty world.
The rover reached the 270-foot-high summit - about the height of the Statue of Liberty - on Aug. 21.
"That's no Mount Everest but for a little rover this was a heck of a climb," mission principal investigator Steve Squyres said in a briefing televised from NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"This is an unprecedented engineering robotic accomplishment," he said.
The panorama will probably be "one of the signature accomplishments of the mission," Squyres said.
Since arriving at its destination, Spirit has been snapping pictures and analyzing the soil with its robotic arm. In coming weeks, the remote-control geologist will roam the summit, studying the makeup of the rocks to determine if they were once water-soaked and look for other clues that the past environment might have been favorable to life.
Scientists hope Spirit's new vantage point will provide a deeper understanding of how Husband Hill formed. During its climb to the top, Spirit passed by layered rocks on the side of the hill that showed evidence of being altered by water, said Ray Arvidson, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and deputy principal investigator of the rover mission.
The rocks, which appeared to be carried to the site by wind or volcanic eruption, were granular and deposited in a set of layers that have since been eroded and exposed, Arvidson said in an interview.
"It all pretty much says Mars was a place, particularly early in time, where liquid water was abundant at or close to the surface," Arvidson said.
Scientists are particularly interested in an inner basin to the south of the summit that contains an outcrop named "home plate" - because it looks like a baseball diamond from orbit. Scientists hope to drive the rover down to explore the basin after it finishes its job at the summit.
Meanwhile, halfway around the Red Planet, Opportunity is recovering from a recent computer glitch that caused it to shut down and power up while surveying the Meridiani Planum region.
Both rovers, whose activities are counted in Martian-length days called "sols," have long outlasted their primary, three-month missions.
"Today is day 591 of our 90-day mission to Mars," Squyres said of Spirit.
The rovers are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
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Associated Press Writer John Antczak contributed to this report.
ON THE NET
Mars mission: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/panoramas/spirit/
More than 1.5 years into their exploration of Mars, both of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers continue to send a cornucopia of images to Earth. The results are so spectacular that Deputy Project Manager John Callas recently described them as "an embarrassment of riches." Spirit produced this image mosaic, nicknamed the "Whale Panorama," two-thirds of the way to the summit of "Husband Hill," where the rover investigated martian rocks. On the right side of the panorama is a tilted layer of rocks dubbed "Larry's Outcrop," one of several tilted outcrops that scientists examined in April, 2005. They used spatial information to create geologic maps showing the compass orientation and degree of tilting of rock formations in the vicinity. Such information is key to geologic fieldwork because it helps establish if rock layers have been warped since they formed. In this case, scientists have also been studying the mineral and chemical differences, which show that some rocks have been more highly altered than others.
In the foreground, in the middle of the image mosaic, Spirit is shown with the scientific instruments at the end of its robotic arm positioned on a rock target known as "Ahab." The rover was busy collecting elemental chemistry and mineralogy data on the rock at the same time that it was taking 50 individual snapshots with its five panoramic camera filters to create this stunning view of the martian scenery. The twin tracks of the rover's all-terrain wheels are clearly visible on the left.
This mosaic of images spans about 220 degrees from left to right and is an approximate true-color rendering of the Mars terrain acquired through the panoramic camera's 750-, 530-, and 430-nanometer filters. Spirit collected these images from its 497th martian day, or sol, through its 500th sol (May 27 through May 30, 2005).
A great please for the new "Club Mars" for terrorist.
From what Ive read a 100MPH wind would only have the force of a 10MPH breeze on earth due to the thin atmosphere.
A good place for a USA flag, indeed. :)
That doesn't mean that dust impingement at that speed wouldn't be a problem.
There's a thought.
Personally I'm most interested in getting some kind of rovers to get a close look at some of the martian canyons.
Like those dune buggy tracks.........
But what about Cydonia?
I want to see what Martian condos look like. ;-)
Yep, it's red, just like we thought. Your tax $$ right down the drain.
Sounds like some projects I'VE been on!
Seems appropriate...
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