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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 29.01.04 11:03l 96 Lines 4665 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 5159-ZL2VAL
Read: GUEST
Subj: Opportunity untucks it's legs
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Sent: 040129/0956Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:34368 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g $:5159-ZL
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
NEWS RELEASE: 2004-43
January 28, 2004
Opportunity Rover Begins Standing Up
NASA's Opportunity rover has untucked its front wheels and latched its
suspension system in place, key steps in preparing to drive off its
lander and onto martian soil.
Overnight tonight, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plan to try tilting the lander platform
down in the front by pressing the rear petal downward to raise the back.
"What we want to do is lower the front edge by about 5 degrees," said
JPL's Dr. Rick Welch, activity lead for preparing the rover for
roll-off. Plans call for driving off straight ahead, possibly as early
as overnight Sunday-Monday, if all goes well.
Meanwhile, halfway around Mars, Opportunity's twin, Spirit, continues on
the mend from a computer memory problem that struck it a week ago.
"Right now we're working to get complete control of the vehicle, and
we're still not quite there," said JPL's Jennifer Trosper, mission
manager. "If we're on the right track, we hope to be back doing some
science by early next week. If we're not on the right track, it could
take longer than that."
Opportunity's infrared sensing instrument, the miniature thermal
emission spectrometer, passed a health check last night. Scientists plan
to begin using it tonight. The instrument detects the composition of
rocks and soils from a distance. That information will help scientists
decide what targets to approach after Opportunity drives off the lander.
Scientists and rover engineers are already discussing which specific
rocks within an outcropping near the lander will make the best targets,
said Dr. Jim Bell of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., lead scientist
for the panoramic cameras on Opportunity and Spirit. Details of the
outcrop can be seen in a new a color-picture mosaic Bell presented, the
first portion of a full-circle panorama that has been taken and
partially transmitted.
Other new images show how Opportunity's airbags left detailed
impressions in the fine-textured soil as the spacecraft was rolling to a
stop in the small crater where it now sits. "These marks are telling us
about the physical properties of the material," Bell said.
Some scientists believe that dark colored granules covering most of the
crater's surface were pressed down into an underlying layer of powdery,
lighter red material when the airbags hit. Others hold to a theory that
the dark granules are agglomerations that crumble into the finer,
lighter material when disturbed. After roll-off, soil near the lander
will be the rover's first target for close-up examination with a
microscope and two tools for detecting the composition of the target.
The soil at Opportunity's landing site appears to have different
properties than the soil at Spirit's landing site, Bell said.
Opportunity has already validated predictions about the landing site
made on the basis of images and measurements taken by spacecraft
orbiting Mars, said JPL's Dr. Matt Golombek, a member of the rover
science team and co-chair of a steering committee that evaluated
potential landing sites for the rovers. The predictions included that
the region of Meridiani Planum where Opportunity landed would be safe
for landing, would be safe for rover driving, would have very few rocks
and would look unlike any place previously seen on Mars.
"This bodes well for our ability to use remote sensing data in the
future for picking landing sites," Golombek said.
Engineers have been able to confirm a diagnosis that an unplanned
drawdown of battery power each night on Opportunity is due to a heater
on the rover's robotic arm. A switch designed to overrule the heater's
thermostatic control has not been working. "In the near term, it's not
providing any operational constraints," Welch said.
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
==============================
73 de Alan
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Points to ponder
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How long a minute is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're on.
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