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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 13.02.04 12:32l 68 Lines 2339 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : B50516ZL2VAL
Read: F6GIA GUEST
Subj: Spirit finds hotspots
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Sent: 040213/1045Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:35741 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
Mars rover detects warm pockets in atmosphere
BY CHRIS KRIDLER
FLORIDA TODAY
Feb 12, 2004
CAPE CANAVERAL -- Mars weather watchers haven't seen towering dust
devils yet through the rovers' eyes, but they are measuring
intriguing spikes in temperature.
NASA's twin robotic rovers can look into the sky with an instrument
that's also designed to read the temperature of rocks.
"If you go out in the desert, you have warm blobs of air move past
you, and they're called thermals," Cornell's Don Banfield, who works
with the science team, said Thursday. "We see them on Earth all the
time."
Now, scientists are seeing them on Mars.
The mini-thermal emission spectrometer on Spirit, reading the
temperature about eight stories high one morning, saw bumps of seven
degrees Fahrenheit every minute or so. The findings could suggest
how wind mixes through the atmosphere, creating Mars' weather and
moving its dust.
Opportunity, busy scanning the "blueberry muffin" rock layers in its
little crater, will point its thermal instrument at the sky in a
couple of days while the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor points its
thermal emission spectrometer down at the same patch of air.
Spirit is covering several feet a day as it traverses the 370 yards
to Bonneville Crater.
Both rovers are seeking evidence in rocks that Mars was once a
wetter place, hospitable to life.
The engineers at California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory hope to
avoid the morning off Spirit had a couple of days ago. Then, the
camera mast cast a shadow on the high-gain antenna, leaving it too
cold to operate properly.
Meanwhile, the teams are scanning rover images for shots of Mars'
massive dust devils, which can be 100 yards wide.
"There was a bit of a false alarm this morning that turned out to be
a dust smudge on one of the cameras," Banfield said Thursday.
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73 de Alan, (Sysop ZL2AB).
AX25:ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
APRS:!3903.34S/17406.45E]
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Message timed: 23:34 on 2004-Feb-13 (NZT)
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Points to ponder
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