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ZL2AB > SPIRIT 08.01.04 12:40l 80 Lines 3111 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 32959_ZL2AB
Read: GUEST
Subj: Delay in rolling off base
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Sent: 040108/1017Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:32959 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g $:32959_Z
From: ZL2AB@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : SPIRIT@WW
Glitches will delay Rover's trek
By Chris Kridler
FLORIDA TODAY
Jan 7, 2004
PASADENA, Calif. -- The Mars rover will wait a couple of extra days
to roll off its lander while the mission team works through airbag
and antenna glitches.
Further tests on the high-gain antenna showed no more current spikes
like one that occurred when it was deployed, mission manager Arthur
Amador said Wednesday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"Everything came back clean as a whistle," he said.
Meanwhile, engineers were slowly retracting airbags still sticking
out from under the lander, said Art Thompson, the tactical uplink
lead for the mission. They hope Spirit can roll straight off the
front of the lander, though probably not until next Wednesday or later.
"We really want nothing more than to get this puppy off the lander,"
Thompson said.
The scientists are echoing that thought as they see more
high-resolution photos taken by Spirit, the first of two rovers to
land on Mars.
Scientists' potential targets for Spirit will multiply when it
completes its full-circle, high-resolution photo of the landing site
in Gusev Crater, which could have been an ancient lake.
"It's a pretty complex site," said Ray Arvidson, a geologist and
deputy principal investigator for the mission. "It's not a simple
lakebed."
He proposed an ancient lakebed may have been covered with lava,
cratered by impacts from space that threw out rocks, then at least
partially covered with dust.
Arvidson also suggested a patch of soil "crumpled" when the
spacecraft's airbags dragged across it probably isn't that exotic
and might be explained by similar processes on Earth.
"We need our engineer buddies to get us off this lander and onto the
surface," Arvidson said
At least we're on Mars. If anything brings that fact home, it's the
new three-dimensional picture unveiled Wednesday, taken by Spirit's
high-resolution, two-eyed panoramic camera.
"We are getting these slow glimpses of the world around us at very
high resolution," pan-cam chief Jim Bell said.
Gazing at the Martian surface through goofy 3-D glasses, journalists
and scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory saw a highly
detailed landscape that was almost palpable.
It featured an undulating surface littered with rocks, stretching
out to a horizon complete with hazy, distant hills.
The 3-D images were greeted with a "Whoa!" from the mission team,
Bell said.
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73 de Alan
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Points to ponder
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Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
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