[FPSPACE] FW: Cornell News: Opportunity recovers; spirits soar

[LARRY KLAES]

>From: cunews at cornell.edu
>Reply-To: cunews at cornell.edu
>To: CUNEWS-PHYSICAL_SCIENCE-L at cornell.edu, CUNEWS-SCIENCE-L at cornell.edu
>Subject: Cornell News: Opportunity recovers; spirits soar
>Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 09:58:34 -0400
>
>Lucky Spirit and even luckier Opportunity continue their odyssey beyond 
>1,000 Martian days
>
>June 14, 2005
>
>Contact: Lauren Gold
>Phone: (607) 255-9736
>E-mail: lg34 at cornell.edu
>
>Media Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
>Phone: (607) 254-8093
>E-mail: bpf2 at cornell.edu
>
>ITHACA, N.Y. -- Luck, it has been said, favors the well prepared.
>
>That explains, perhaps, the fortune of the plucky Mars rovers Spirit and 
>Opportunity -- and their creators, including Cornell Professor Steve 
>Squyres, scientific leader of the NASA mission, back on Earth.
>
>To say June has been a good month for the Mars Expedition Rover (MER) team 
>is -- well, like saying getting to Mars is a bit of a hike. The mission has 
>been, for the scientists and engineers who expected the rovers to explore 
>the planet for 90 days, a remarkable 17-month adventure.
>
>And it's not over. On June 4, Opportunity escaped from the sand trap now 
>called Purgatory Dune. And last week Spirit, in Gusev crater on the 
>opposite side of Mars, discovered a basaltic rock -- valuable because its 
>characteristics vary slightly from the rocks around it.
>
>Opportunity's escape was a long-awaited thrill. The rover, which found 
>itself unexpectedly mired in deep sand on Meridiani Planum on April 26, had 
>been making slow, steady progress -- turning its wheels 192 meters between 
>May 13 and June 4. Each day, it gained a few centimeters.
>
>And then, suddenly, it was free. "There was no ambiguity," said Squyres. 
>"It was like night and day."
>
>The news came in on the morning of June 4. "I knew instantly that we were 
>out," said Cornell senior research associate Rob Sullivan, who with Jet 
>Propulsion Laboratory mobility engineer Jeffrey Biesiadecki and a small 
>group of scientists and engineers built a giant sandbox -- filled with 
>sand, clay, and material used to treat swimming pools -- to simulate the 
>conditions on Mars. ("We cleaned out hardware stores and at least one Home 
>Depot for some of these materials," Sullivan said. "I think if people 
>wanted to treat their pools that week, they were probably out of luck.")
>
>Mindful that time spent in the dune was time lost from the mission, the 
>team worked almost nonstop until Opportunity was free.
>
>"We've had a feeling over the past several days that this was coming," 
>Squyres wrote that evening. "Still, it's hard to describe how good it felt 
>to check out the downlink and see all six wheels back on solid ground 
>again. You develop pretty strong feelings for these vehicles once you've 
>spent enough time with them, and when one of them gets into trouble you 
>really sweat it until the trouble is over."
>
>The following Tuesday found the black-cowboy-booted Squyres in his office 
>in the Space Sciences Building, chatting easily with students between MER 
>planning teleconferences.
>
>"I don't think I realized how nervous I was about being stuck," he said. 
>"Until we got unstuck."
>
>With Opportunity now in the clear, its next assignment is to turn 180 
>degrees and examine the treacherous area with its sensing arm. Images of 
>the dune sent back by the rover's panoramic camera, or Pancam, already 
>indicate that all six wheels dug more deeply into the soil than any 
>previous intentional wheel-trenching activity (in which only one wheel is 
>used to dig a shallower hole).  "There are these deep ruts, like little 
>mini-canyons," said Jim Bell, Pancam team leader and Cornell professor of 
>astronomy. Understanding their composition and origin will help the team 
>spot and avoid similar traps as Opportunity picks up its journey toward 
>Erebus crater.
>
>Just half a kilometer to the south, Erebus is another mystery. Unlike the 
>dark, hematite-rich ground Opportunity has spent its time on so far, the 
>crater looks intriguingly bright.
>
>The brightness may be exposed bedrock, says Bell -- or it may be something 
>else entirely. "I would say bedrock is a good working hypothesis, but we 
>haven't seen it up close," says Bell. "And whether it's the same kind of 
>bedrock we've seen at Eagle crater (where Opportunity landed) and Endurance 
>Crater (whose rim it explored last year), we don't know. We're just antsy 
>to get there."
>
>So far, both rovers have found strong evidence that Mars was once wet 
>enough to support life. From Opportunity, the evidence has been orbs of 
>hematite "blueberries" in Eagle crater and rippled patterns in bedrock; 
>from Spirit it's been high chlorine, bromine and sulfur levels in the 
>Columbia Hills.
>
>And concern for Opportunity aside, no one is neglecting Spirit. The first 
>rover launched crossed a symbolic milestone June 3, completing its 500th 
>sol (a sol is a Martian day, which lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 
>seconds) at work on the planet.
>
>Faithfully toiling in the Columbia Hills, Spirit had its own touch of luck 
>last week.
>
>For weeks Spirit has been doing meticulous strike and dip measurements, 
>collecting data scientists need to work out a history of geologic events in 
>the area. (Strike is the compass direction of a horizontal line on an 
>inclined plane; dip is the angle of inclination measured from the 
>horizontal.) The rover was about to set out on a complex drive south when 
>its mini-thermal emission spectrometer (Mini-TES, which measures infrared 
>radiation) caught a glimpse of the rock now called Backstay.
>
>"Backstay was different than anything we saw before," said Squyres. "It's a 
>loose rock, not bedrock, so maybe it was ejected from someplace farther 
>away, or someplace deeper. The Mini-TES spectrum is nothing wildly exotic . 
>. . the thing certainly seems to be some kind of basalt. But if it's a 
>flavor of basalt we haven't seen before, then it's definitely worth a quick 
>look."
>
>As serendipity would have it, he added, the rover's drive that day took it 
>to within four meters of the rock. "It was like we were meant to be there."
>
>Over the next few days, Spirit used its Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) to brush 
>the rock clean for its Alpha particle X-ray spectrometer (APXS), which 
>confirmed the basalt's different composition.
>
>	On Thursday night, as Spirit examined Backstay, planners sent the next 
>sol's instructions up to Opportunity. It was their 1,000th uplink.
>
>"For people who aren't on the project, that probably doesn't matter," said 
>Squyres. "But it's what we do. And we've done it 1,000 times now, and 
>that's a big deal."
>
>"Actually," he added, "we're up to 1,003 now. It just keeps going."
>
>Luck? Probably not. Luck, after all, only goes so far.
>
>But then there's careful planning and persistence; dedication and 
>flexibility.
>
>And like jaunty black cowboy boots, those never go out of style.
>
>
>Related World Wide Web sites:
>
>Athena Mars Exploration Rovers (Cornell): <http://athena.cornell.edu/>
>Mars Exploration Rover Mission (JPL/NASA): 
><http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html>
>Cornell News Service's Cornell on Mars Page: 
><http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/rover/>
>
>-30-
>
>The web version of this story, with accompanying photos, is available at 
>http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/June05/Athena.6.8.lg.html
>--
>
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>