SETI public: Fw: Healthy Rover Shows Its New Neighborhood on Mars

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: Fw: This Week in The Space Review - 2004 January 5"

----- Original Message -----
From: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Sent: Sunday, January 04, 2004 8:15 PM
To: ljk4_at_msn.com
Subject: Healthy Rover Shows Its New Neighborhood on Mars

Donald Savage (202) 358-1547
NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

Guy Webster (818) 354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

NEWS RELEASE: 2004-004 January 4, 2004

Healthy Rover Shows Its New Neighborhood On Mars

NASA's Spirit Rover is starting to examine its new
surroundings, revealing a vast flatland well suited to the
robot's unprecedented mobility and scientific toolkit.

"Spirit has told us that it is healthy," Jennifer Trosper of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said
today. Trosper is Spirit mission manager for operations on
Mars' surface. The rover remains perched on its lander
platform, and the next nine days or more will be spent
preparing for egress, or rolling off, onto the martian
surface.

With only two degrees of tilt, with the deck toward the
front an average of only about 37 centimeters (15 inches)
off the ground, and with apparently no large rocks blocking
the way, the lander is in good position for egress. "The
egress path we're working toward is straight ahead," Trosper
said.

The rover's initial images excited scientists about the
prospects of exploring the region after the roll-off.

"My hat is off to the navigation team because they did a
fantastic job of getting us right where we wanted to be,"
said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.,
principal investigator for the science payload. By
correlating images taken by Spirit with earlier images from
spacecraft orbiting Mars, the mission team has determined
that the rover appears to be in a region marked with
numerous swaths where dust devils have removed brighter dust
and left darker gravel behind.

"This is our new neighborhood," Squyres said. "We hit the
sweet spot. We wanted someplace where the wind had cleared
off the rocks for us. We've landed in a place that's so
thick with dust devil tracks that a lot of the dust has been
blown away."

The terrain looks different from any of the sites examined
by NASA's three previous successful landers -- the two
Vikings in 1976 and Mars Pathfinder in 1987.

"What we're seeing is a section of surface that is
remarkably devoid of big boulders, at least in our immediate
vicinity, and that's good news because big boulders are
something we would have trouble driving over," Squyres said.
"We see a rock population that is different from anything
we've seen elsewhere on Mars, and it comes out very much in
our favor."
Spirit arrived at Mars Jan. 3 (EST and PST; Jan. 4
Universal Time) after a seven month journey. Its task
is to spend the next three months exploring for clues
in rocks and soil about whether the past environment at
this part of Mars was ever watery and suitable to
sustain life.

Spirit's twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, will
reach its landing site on the opposite side of Mars on Jan.
25 (EST and Universal Time; Jan. 24 PST) to begin a similar
examination of a site on the opposite side of the planet
from Gusev Crater.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of
Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rover project
for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington.
Additional information about the project is available
from JPL at:

               http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=M4QDO0RFVIBO-3BCLCXxIg..
http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=0FGl6EHuFPdO-3BCLCXxIg..
                              
and from Cornell University at:

                 http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=1eGcrfgm7tFO-3BCLCXxIg. http://jpl.convio.net/site/R?i=bYJQns_85-pO-3BCLCXxIg..

                              
                            -end-

• Previous message: LARRY KLAES: "SETI public: Fw: This Week in The Space Review - 2004 January 5"

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Mon Jan 05 2004 - 05:06:26 PST