(NOTE THAT FREEPERS ARE 24HRS. AHEAD OF NASA/JPL THEORY ON NATURE OF BRIGHT SOIL)
Posted on 02/17/2004 5:48:42 PM PST by Phil V.
Opportunity Digs; Spirit Advances February 17, 2004
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has scooped a trench with one of its wheels to reveal what is below the surface of a selected patch of soil.
"Yesterday we dug a nice big hole on Mars," said Jeffrey Biesiadecki, a rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The rover alternately pushed soil forward and backward out of the trench with its right front wheel while other wheels held the rover in place. The rover turned slightly between bouts of digging to widen the hole. "We took a patient, gentle approach to digging," Biesiadecki said. The process lasted 22 minutes.
The resulting trench -- the first dug by either Mars Exploration Rover -- is about 50 centimeters (20 inches) long and 10 centimeters (4 inches) deep. "It came out deeper than I expected," said Dr. Rob Sullivan of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., a science-team member who worked closely with engineers to plan the digging.
Two features that caught scientists' attention were the clotty texture of soil in the upper wall of the trench and the brightness of soil on the trench floor, Sullivan said. Researchers look forward to getting more information from observations of the trench planned during the next two or three days using the rover's full set of science instruments.
Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit, drove 21.6 meters closer to its target destination of a crater nicknamed "Bonneville" overnight Monday to Tuesday. It has now rolled a total of 108 meters (354 feet) since leaving its lander 34 days ago, surpassing the total distance driven by the Mars Pathfinder mission's Sojourner rover in 1997.
Spirit has also begun using a transmission rate of 256 kilobits per second, double its previous best, said JPL's Richard Cook. Cook became project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project today when the former manager, Peter Theisinger, switched to manage NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project, in development for a 2009 launch.
Spirit's drive toward "Bonneville" is based on expectations that the impact that created the crater "would have overturned the stratigraphy and exposed it for our viewing pleasure," said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments. That stratigraphy, or arrangement of rock layers, could hold clues to the mission's overriding question -- whether the past environment in the region of Mars where Spirit landed was ever persistently wet and possibly suitable for sustaining life.
Both rovers have returned striking new pictures in recent days. Microscope images of soil along Spirit's path reveal smoothly rounded pebbles. Views from both rovers' navigation cameras looking back toward their now-empty landers show the wheel tracks of the rovers’ travels since leaving the landers.
Each martian day, or "sol" lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. Opportunity begins its 25th sol on Mars at 10:59 p.m. Tuesday, PST. Spirit begins its 46th sol on Mars at 11:17 a.m. Wednesday, Pacific Standard Time. 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 at http://athena.cornell.edu.
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Guy Webster (818) 354-5011 JPL
Donald Savage (202) 358-1547 NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
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Daily Updates - February 17, 2004
Opportunity Status for sol 23 Can You Dig It? posted Feb. 17, 3:45 pm PST
The Opportunity rover successfully dug an 8-centimeter (3.1 inch) trench on Mars using its right front “paw” or wheel on sol 23, which will end at 10:19 p.m. Monday, PST. Sol 23's wake-up music was “Spinning Wheel” by Blood, Sweat, and Tears, in honor of the right front wheel.
Opportunity also made observations with the navigation camera to help prepare for the drive to a target of interest within the outcrop named “El Capitan” later this week.
The plan for sol 24, which will end at 10:59 p.m. Tuesday, PST, is to thoroughly examine the freshly exposed layers of dirt and ground inside the rover-made hole. Opportunity will use its microscopic imager, Mössbauer spectrometer, and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to take parallel science measurements and compare with those with measurements made on sol 22 during pre-trench activities.
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Spirit Status for sol 44 Spirit Passes 100-Meter Mark posted Feb. 17, 12 pm PST
Spirit controllers are calling sol 44 one of Spirit's most complicated and productive sols to date. Before commencing its record-breaking drive, Spirit began the sol, which ended at 10:38 a.m. February 17, 2004 PST, with an alpha particle x-ray spectrometer analysis of the soil target Ramp Flats. The analysis ran in parallel with a miniature thermal emission spectrometer observation of the martian sky. Spirit then continued observing "Ramp Flats" with the microscopic imager and Moessbauer spectrometer while operating the panoramic camera to get pictures of rocks in the distance called "V Ger" and "Broken Slate."
But this morning multi-tasking was only the beginning. After stowing the robotic arm, Spirit began a north-northeast drive that added a total of 21.6 meters (70.9 feet), bringing the rover's grand total to 108 meters (354 feet). That distance is about 6 meters (19.7 feet) more than Sojourner’s mission record, set in 1997. Controllers remarked that Spirit’s auto-navigation drives are consistently getting faster. These long drives are revealing new and interesting terrain, including more ridges, dunes, ripples and rocks with various appearances.
The plan for sol 45, which will end at 11:17 a.m. Feb. 18, 2004 PST, begins with analysis of a target at the current location, followed by a drive into a hollow between 15 meters (49 feet) and 18 meters (59 feet) away.
(NOTE THAT FREEPERS ARE 24HRS. AHEAD OF NASA/JPL THEORY ON NATURE OF BRIGHT SOIL)
ROFLMAO...somebody has been watching the crappy first Star Trek movie...
OMG!!!
I'm dead meat.
Tell me about the FReepmail...I post a lot of scientific articles.
It was from someone I never heard of before.
I guess he is the Mars version of the Soup Nazi..
oops.......no laughing!
Craig Barrett confirms 64 bit address extensions for Xeon. And Prescott (Intel follows AMD )
You mean Free Republic ain't free anymore?
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