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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 30.01.04 12:40l 89 Lines 4045 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : B60466ZL2VAL
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Subj: Rover update, 29 Jan
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Sent: 040130/1028Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:34470 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
NEWS RELEASE: 2004-044
January 29, 2004
Healthier Spirit Gets Back to Work While Opportunity Prepares to Roll
NASA's Spirit rover on Mars has resumed taking pictures as engineers
continue work on restoring its health. Meanwhile, Spirit's twin,
Opportunity, extended its rear wheels backward to driving position last
night as part of preparations to roll off its lander, possibly as early
as overnight Saturday-to-Sunday.
Spirit shot and transmitted a picture yesterday to show the position of
its robotic arm. "The arm is exactly where we expected," said Jennifer
Trosper, mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif. It is still extended in the same position as when the rover
developed communication and computer problems on Jan. 22. A
mineral-identifying instrument called a Moessbauer spectrometer, at the
tip of the arm, is positioned at a rock nicknamed Adirondack.
Engineers have been carefully nursing Spirit back toward full operations
for the past week. They are sending commands today for the rover to
begin making new scientific observations again, starting with panoramic
camera images of nearby rocks. Today's commands also tell the rover to
send data stored by two instruments since they took readings on
Adirondack last week -- the Moessbauer spectrometer and the alpha
particle X-ray spectrometer, which identifies the chemical elements in a
target.
"We know we still have some engineering work to do, but we think we
understand the problem well enough to do science in parallel with that
work," Trosper said. Several attempts to get a full trace of data
related to the rover's problem have only partially succeeded. The
engineers might choose to reformat the rover's flash memory in the next
few days.
A health check of Spirit's camera mast is on the agenda for today.
Another health check, of an actuator motor for a periscope mirror of the
miniature thermal emission spectrometer, is planned for Friday.
Halfway around Mars from Spirit, Opportunity's lander platform
successfully tilted itself forward by pulling airbag material under the
rear portion of the lander then flexing its rear petal downward. "What
this did is drive our front edge lower," said JPL's Matt Wallace,
mission manager. "The tips of the egress aid (a reinforced fabric ramp)
are now in the soil. That makes egress look perfect. It's going to be an
easy ride." The rover also retracted a lift mechanism underneath the
rover, to get it out of the way for the egress, or drive-off.
During Opportunity's sol 6, the martian day that started today at 10:26
a.m. PST, the rover will be commanded to lower the middle pair of its
six wheels and to release its robotic arm from the latch that has held
it since before launch.
Yesterday, Opportunity used its minature thermal emission spectrometer
on a portion of the landing neighborhood that includes a rock outcrop.
The instrument identifies the composition of rocks and soils from a
distance. Opportunity did not return the data from those observations
before going to sleep for the martian night, but may later today.
The rovers' main task in coming weeks and months is to explore their
landing sites for evidence in the rocks and soil about whether the
sites' past environments were ever watery and possibly suitable for
sustaining life.
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, (Sysop ZL2AB).
AX25:ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
APRS:!3903.34S/17406.45E]
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Message timed: 23:29 on 2004-Jan-30 (NZ local)
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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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