From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Wed Jan 07 2004 - 08:53:47 PST
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10762575&BRD=1395&PAG=461&dept_id=216620&rfi=6
Scientists breathe sigh of relief as probe lands safely
By: Larry KlaesJanuary 07, 2004
On a rainy and unseasonably warm Saturday evening in Ithaca, over 120 members of the public and media visited Cornell University's Space Sciences Building (SSB). They came to witness the landing of an automated rover named Spirit on the surface of a distant and alien world that was now as dry and cold as Ithaca is wet and warm; but perhaps, long ago, this planet called Mars was more like Earth. This is what Spirit, its makers, and the public at large were there to learn.
Several rooms in the SSB had large screen projections of live images from NASA Television of Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, where the rover mission was being conducted. At least 15 members of the Cornell team that worked on the Athena science package aboard Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity, were there in person to help make sure the first rover to land on the Red Planet since Sojourner in 1997 made it safely to the floor of the giant crater named Gusev.
Team member Don Banfield, monitoring the situation from the SSB, remarked that the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) are a "really unique mission that has never been done before on Mars." The sophisticated geology tools they carry and the discoveries they could make on the Red Planet have the "geologists really excited."
The anticipation and tension of the crowds throughout the building grew as the 11:35 p.m. ET landing time approached. Every word, gesture, and expression of the Mission Control team was scrutinized to know exactly what was happening with Spirit.
Tensions grew when Mission Control announced several signals losses during this "six minutes of terror" as Spirit decelerated from a speed of 12,000 miles per hour and endured forces up to six times what we experience on Earth. Fortunately these momentary silences were anticipated as Spirit shed its heat shield and then opened its large parachute and incredible cluster of air bags. The Cornell crowd roared at the news of the air bags deployment. Everyone's attention was on the projection screens.
Then, in true dramatic fashion, as the rover was predicted to have impacted on the Martian surface and begin its long series of bounces and rolls across the alien ground, the tones disappeared. Applause stopped and everyone waited for 10 long minutes. Worries grew as Spirit continued to remain mute; thoughts of Europe's Beagle 2 and the United States' 1999 probe Mars Polar Lander kept coming to mind. To top it off, Earth would soon be setting as seen by Spirit from its landing site.
Suddenly the JPL control room stood up and began clapping their hands and cheering: Spirit was on the surface of Mars and returning a strong signal to Earth. The crowd at Cornell hesitated a bit to make certain this was not another false alarm. Only when the news was proven to be true did Don Banfield pop open a bottle of champagne.
"I am relieved," said Banfield. I'm anxious to get the [the rover] out there and do stuff now that the lander is on the surface."
Concerns about the condition of Spirit evaporated as new information came in about the rover and its landing event. Not only had Spirit survived touch down on Mars, the rover also sent back three images during its descent to the planet's surface, relayed seven minutes of data during its long bounce across the crater floor, and even landed "base petal down". This meant that the rover was sitting upright on the ground and would not have to be readjusted.
There was another bonus as well: Thanks to the Mars Odyssey orbiter circling overhead, a 12-minute selection of first images taken by Spirit of its new home would be transmitted up to the probe and relayed to Earth, even as our blue globe sank out of sight below the Martian horizon. The historic photographs were expected in just a few hours.
At 2:30 a.m., a hardy group in the Space Sciences Building was eagerly monitoring the screens when the very first image from Spirit appeared Though small and grainy, the sundial/calibration target that Bill Nye the "Science Guy" had strongly promoted appeared on the white background. Those gathered barely had time to comment on this event when another image took its place, this one a dark panorama of the landing site out to the horizon. This was followed by a small blizzard of images of various parts of the rover, the landing base, and the Martian surface, bursting out like a field of flowers.
Despite the hardiness and luck that Spirit has shown so far in its mission, the team will not be pushing the rover too hard or fast, lest that luck run out. Spirit will spend up to nine days sitting on the lander base petal while the Earth team checks out all of its systems and slowly gets the rover ready to put "six wheels in the dirt."
The images from Mars will improve once the Pancam is up and running, with incredible color panoramas of Gusev Crater being the highlight of these photographs.
For more information on the Mars Rovers, visit these Web sites: athena.cornell.edu/ and mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mer/.
Larry Klaes
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Wed Jan 07 2004 - 09:21:15 PST