Posted on 01/05/2004 8:36:12 PM PST by Bush Cheney
PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 5 -- NASA's Mars team established two-way communications with the robotic rover Spirit early Monday and began cutting cables and taking other steps to prepare it to stand up and roll off the landing platform onto Martian soil next week.
As Spirit began its third day on the surface late Monday, mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory got to work on the nuts-and-bolts tasks involved in exploring a world 100 million miles away.
The initial stream of images of the Martian landscape, relayed from Spirit through an orbiting spacecraft overhead, revealed several features that have scientists salivating. The most alluring one is a 30-foot-diameter circular depression in the desert-like expanse to the north of the rover, about 40 feet away, where scientists can see exposed rock on the far wall, said lead scientist Steven W. Squyres of Cornell University.
In honor of the team's relentless schedule, he said, they named the feature Sleepy Hollow. He called it "a window into the interior of Mars."
The rover's exploration plan may change as more and better pictures of the surrounding landscape arrive, he said. The team was eagerly awaiting the transmission of a multi-frame 3-D color mosaic taken by Spirit's Pancam, a panoramic camera with very high resolution.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 | Ohio | 285.00 |
6 |
47.50 |
440 |
0.65 |
552.25 |
16 |
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