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ZL2VAL > SPIRIT 15.01.04 13:59l 92 Lines 4305 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Spirit ready to rock 'n roll
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Sent: 040115/1004Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:33354 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g $:33354_Z
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : SPIRIT@WW
NEWS RELEASE: 2004-19
January 14, 2004
Spirit Ready to Drive onto Mars Surface
NASA's Spirit completed a three-stage turn early today, the last step
before a drive planned early Thursday to take the rover off its lander
platform and onto martian soil for the first time.
"We are very excited about where we are today. We've just completed the
exploration of our lander and we're ready to explore Mars," said Kevin
Burke of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., leader of
the engineering team that planned the rover's egress from the lander.
"We are headed in a north-northwest direction. That is our exit path,
and we're sitting just where we want to be."
Late tonight, mission managers at JPL plan to send the command for
Spirit to drive forward 3 meters (10 feet), enough to get all six wheels
onto the soil.
After the move, one of the rover's first jobs will be to locate the Sun
with its panoramic camera and calculate from the Sun's position how to
point its main antenna at Earth, JPL's Jennifer Trosper, mission
manager, explained.
On Friday, Spirit's science team will take advantage of special
possibilities presented by the European Space Agency's Mars Express
orbiter flying almost directly overhead, about 300 kilometers (186
miles) high. Mars Express successfully entered orbit around Mars last
month. Spirit will be looking up while Mars Express uses three
instruments to look down.
"This is an historic opportunity," said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington
University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the science
instruments on Spirit and on its twin Mars Exploration Rover,
Opportunity. "The intent is to get observations from above and to get
observations from below at the same time to do the best possible job of
determining the dynamics of the atmosphere." The Mars Express
observations are also expected to supplement earlier information from
two NASA Mars orbiters about the surface minerals and landforms in
Spirit's neighborhood within Gusev Crater.
Mars Express will be looking down with a high-resolution stereo camera,
a spectrometer for identifying minerals in infrared and visible
wavelengths, and another spectrometer for studying atmospheric
circulation and composition. Spirit will be looking up with its
panoramic camera and its infrared spectrometer.
Dr. Michael Smith of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.,
reported how Spirit's miniature thermal emission spectrometer can be
used to assess the temperatures in Mars' atmosphere from near the
planet's surface to several kilometers or miles high. Spirit's
measurements are most sensitive for the lower portion of the atmosphere,
while Mars Express' measurements will be most sensitive for the upper
atmosphere, he said.
Spirit arrived at Mars Jan. 3 (EST and PST; Jan. 4 Universal Time) after
a seven-month journey. In coming weeks and months, according to plans,
it will be exploring for clues in rocks and soil to decipher whether the
past environment in Gusev Crater was ever watery and possibly suitable
to sustain life.
Opportunity will reach Mars on Jan. 25 (EST and Universal Time; 9:05
p.m., Jan. 24, PST) to begin a similar examination of a site on the
opposite side of the planet from Gusev Crater. As of Thursday morning,
Opportunity will have flown 438 million kilometers (272 million miles)
since launch and will still have 18 million kilometers (11 million
miles) to go before landing.
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, Ithaca, N.Y., at: http://athena.cornell.edu
==============================
73 de Alan
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