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ZL2VAL > ROVERS 12.03.04 10:09l 114 Lines 5311 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : B60618ZL2VAL
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Subj: Spirit peeks over the edge
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Sent: 040312/0749Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:37439 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : ROVERS@WW
NEWS RELEASE: 2004-083
March 11, 2004
Spirit Looks Down Into Crater After Reaching Rim
NASA's Spirit has begun looking down into a crater it has been
approaching for several weeks, providing a view of what's below the
surrounding surface.
Spirit has also been looking up, seeing stars and the first observation
of Earth from the surface of another planet. Its twin, Opportunity, has
shown scientists a "mother lode" of hematite now considered a target for
close-up investigation.
"It's been an extremely exciting and productive week for both of the
rovers," said Spirit Mission Manager Jennifer Trosper at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Dr. Chris Leger, a rover driver at JPL, said, "The terrain has been
getting trickier and trickier as we've gotten close to the crater. The
slopes have been getting steeper and we have more rocks." Spirit has now
traveled a total of 335 meters (1,099 feet).
Spirit's new position on the rim of the crater nicknamed "Bonneville"
offers a vista in all directions, including the crater interior. The
distance to the opposite rim is about the length of two football fields,
nearly 10 times the diameter of Opportunity's landing-site crater
halfway around the planet from Spirit.
Initial images from Spirit's navigation camera do not reveal any obvious
layers in "Bonneville's" inner wall, but they do show tantalizing clues
of rock features high on the far side, science-team member Dr. Matt
Golombek of JPL said at a news briefing today. "This place where we've
just arrived has opened up, and it's going to take us a few days to get
our arms around it."
Scientists anticipate soon learning more about the crater from Spirit's
higher-resolution panoramic camera and the miniature thermal emission
spectrometer, both of which can identify minerals from a distance. They
will use that information for deciding whether to send Spirit down into
the crater.
From the crater rim and during martian nighttime earlier today, Spirit
took pictures of stars, including a portion of the constellation Orion.
Shortly before dawn four martian days earlier, it photographed Earth as
a speck of light in the morning twilight. The tests of rover
capabilities for astronomical observations will be used in planning
possible studies of Mars' atmospheric characteristics at night. Those
studies might include estimating the amounts of dust and ice particles
in the atmosphere from their effects on starlight, said Dr. Mark Lemmon,
a science team member from Texas A&M University, College Station.
Opportunity has been looking up, too. It has photographed Mars' larger
moon, Phobos, passing in front of the Sun twice in the past week, and
Mars' smaller moon, Deimos, doing so once.
Opportunity's miniature thermal emission spectrometer has taken
upward-looking readings of the atmospheric temperature at the same time
as a similar instrument, the thermal emission spectrometer on NASA's
Mars Global Surveyor orbiter, took downward-pointed readings while
passing overhead. "They were actually looking directly along the same
path," said science team member Dr. Michael Wolff of the Martinez, Ga.,
branch of the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. The combined
readings give the first full temperature profile from the top of Mars'
atmosphere to the surface."
When pointed at the ground, Opportunity's miniature thermal emission
spectrometer has checked the abundance of hematite in all directions
from the rover's location inside its landing-site crater. This mineral,
in its coarse-grained form, usually forms in a wet environment.
Detection of hematite from orbit was the prime factor in selection of
the Meridiani Planum region for Opportunity's landing site.
"The plains outside our crater are covered with hematite," said Dr. Phil
Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, lead scientist for the
instrument. "The rock outcrop we've been studying has some hematite.
Parts of the floor of the crater, interestingly enough, have virtually
none." The pattern fits a theory that the crater was dug by an impact
that punched through a hematite-rich surface layer, he said. One goal
for Opportunity's future work is to learn more about that surface layer
to get more clues about the wet past environment indicated by sulfate
minerals identified last week in the crater's outcrop.
Christensen said that before Opportunity drives out of the crater in
about 10 days, scientists plan to investigate one area on the inner
slope of the crater that he called "the mother lode of hematite."
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: 20:42 on 2004-Mar-12 (NZT)
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Points to ponder
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marriage
~~~~~~~~
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. A Second Marriage
is the triumph of hope over experience.
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