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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 18.02.04 12:25l 87 Lines 3886 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Update 17th Feb
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From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
NEWS RELEASE: 2004-062
February 17, 2004
Opportunity Digs; Spirit Advances
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has scooped a trench with one
of its wheels to reveal what is below the surface of a selected patch of
soil.
"Yesterday we dug a nice big hole on Mars," said Jeffrey Biesiadecki, a
rover planner at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
The rover alternately pushed soil forward and backward out of the trench
with its right front wheel while other wheels held the rover in place.
The rover turned slightly between bouts of digging to widen the hole.
"We took a patient, gentle approach to digging," Biesiadecki said. The
process lasted 22 minutes.
The resulting trench -- the first dug by either Mars Exploration Rover
-- is about 50 centimeters (20 inches) long and 10 centimeters (4
inches) deep. "It came out deeper than I expected," said Dr. Rob
Sullivan of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., a science-team member who
worked closely with engineers to plan the digging.
Two features that caught scientists' attention were the clotty texture
of soil in the upper wall of the trench and the brightness of soil on
the trench floor, Sullivan said. Researchers look forward to getting
more information from observations of the trench planned during the next
two or three days using the rover's full set of science instruments.
Opportunity's twin rover, Spirit, drove 21.6 meters closer to its target
destination of a crater nicknamed "Bonneville" overnight Monday to
Tuesday. It has now rolled a total of 108 meters (354 feet) since
leaving its lander 34 days ago, surpassing the total distance driven by
the Mars Pathfinder mission's Sojourner rover in 1997.
Spirit has also begun using a transmission rate of 256 kilobits per
second, double its previous best, said JPL's Richard Cook. Cook became
project manager for the Mars Exploration Rover Project today when the
former manager, Peter Theisinger, switched to manage NASA's Mars Science
Laboratory Project, in development for a 2009 launch.
Spirit's drive toward "Bonneville" is based on expectations that the
impact that created the crater "would have overturned the stratigraphy
and exposed it for our viewing pleasure," said Dr. Ray Arvidson of
Washington University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for
the rovers' science instruments. That stratigraphy, or arrangement of
rock layers, could hold clues to the mission's overriding question --
whether the past environment in the region of Mars where Spirit landed
was ever persistently wet and possibly suitable for sustaining life.
Both rovers have returned striking new pictures in recent days.
Microscope images of soil along Spirit's path reveal smoothly rounded
pebbles. Views from both rovers' navigation cameras looking back toward
their now-empty landers show the wheel tracks of the rovers? travels
since leaving the landers.
Each martian day, or "sol" lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth
day. Opportunity begins its 25th sol on Mars at 10:59 p.m. Tuesday, PST.
Spirit begins its 46th sol on Mars at 11:17 a.m. Wednesday, Pacific
Standard Time. The two rovers are halfway around Mars from each other.
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, (Sysop ZL2AB).
AX25:ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
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Message timed: 23:21 on 2004-Feb-18 (NZT)
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Points to ponder
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A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
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