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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 05.11.04 12:48l 94 Lines 3843 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : B20366ZL2VAL
Read: GUEST
Subj: Sand traps & Dust devils
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Sent: 041105/1041Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:51195 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
Nov 4, 9:06 PM
Mars rovers struggle with sandy slopes, solar winter
BY CHRIS KRIDLER
FLORIDA TODAY
Opportunity, one of NASA's two Mars rovers, struggled to get up the side
of Endurance Crater. It spun its wheels, digging deep holes in the
stadium-size crater's "sand trap."
But on the third day of toil, after "burying one or two of our wheels to
the hubcaps," principal investigator Steve Squyres said Thursday, it
made it onto a rocky slope that could reveal more secrets of Mars.
"Burns Cliff has several meters of beautiful, layered rock exposed in
it," said Squyres of Cornell University. The layers could help
scientists figure out how water and wind changed the crater through
thousands of years.
The rovers, which landed in January, are way beyond their 90-day life
expectancy. They're continuing to explore the history of water, which
could offer hints as to when and where life might have formed there.
The younger rocks of Burns Cliff may have been formed in liquid water,
Squyres said.
Ground water -- water below the surface -- saturated the rocks in the
area at one time, Squyres said, and round "blueberries" formed from
minerals in the rocks. Those were seen at Opportunity's first landing
site, which provided evidence there was likely a salty sea in that part
of Mars.
It appears the rocks dried up, and then something slammed into the
ground, forming Endurance Crater. After that, it's not clear what
happened, though fascinating rocks such as one named Wopmay show
fractures in polygonal shapes, along with coatings that could have been
formed by something as simple as frost.
A colleague nicknamed Wopmay the "petrified Martian dinosaur brain,"
Squyres said. "From a distance, it looked extremely exotic." But it had
the blueberries already seen elsewhere at Meridiani Planum.
Opportunity had a lucky break recently when a mysterious "cleaning
event" apparently blew dust off its solar panels, increasing its power
by up to 5 percent overnight, project manager Jim Erickson said. The
favorite theory: A dust devil ran over the rover.
On the other side of Mars, Spirit is coping with the low power provided
by the winter sun and some technical glitches as it explores the
Columbia Hills. The hills are very different from the plains around
them, probably older, and filled with layers.
"We're in a new environment where sedimentology, I think, rules," said
Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator from Washington University
in St. Louis. Scientists are still sorting out theories about the hills,
but some think they were formed by volcanic ash, possibly blown into the
air and deposited in the 100-mile-wide Gusev Crater. There's evidence
ground water changed rocks there, too.
Engineers plan a slow climb for Spirit. It's about halfway up the hills,
which are as tall as a football field is long. It can study the changing
rocks as it moves up to determine their history.
"It's what a field geologist would do on Earth," Arvidson said.
Today, Spirit marks 300 sols on Mars -- or Martian days. That's 307 Earth
days. A Martian day is about 24 hours, 39 minutes.
-=###=-
73, Alan
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Message timed: 23:30 on 05-Nov-2004
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