January 6, 2004
Spirit Sends
First Color Pictures from Mars
The people operating NASA's Spirit have
received the first color pictures from the rover and a congratulatory
call from the president.
President George W. Bush called today to
congratulate the rover flight team for reconfirming the American
spirit of exploration, said Dr. Charles Elachi, director of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., where the mission
is managed. Later in the day, the Spirit team awakened the rover
with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's rendition of "Hail to
the Chief."
First Color Image from Spirit
Click
for larger image
Courtesy NASA/JPL
Color images in a mosaic released today
are the highest-resolution pictures ever sent from Mars, more
than three times as detailed as images from Mars Pathfinder in
1997. Spirit's panoramic camera took 12 contiguous frames that
the camera team combined into the mosaic.
"This is the day we've been waiting
for," said Dr. Jim Bell of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.,
leader of the panoramic camera team.
The scene rises from near the edge of Spirit's
lander platform to the sky. Scientists are examining every detail
to learn about the landing area within Gusev Crater. In one section
of particular interest, retraction of the spacecraft's deflated
airbags has disturbed the surface.
"There are places where rocks were
dragged through the soil and the soil was stripped off and folded
into bizarre textures," Bell said. Other areas show tails
of debris to one side of rocks, possibly shaped by martian winds.
"There's a wonderful mix of both smooth and angular rocks
near the landing site, and this is something we'll be trying
to puzzle out in the next few weeks," he said.
Scientists and the public may soon have
even more to look at. The panoramic camera mosaic released today
shows about one-eighth of a full-circle panorama of the landing
region. The camera team plans to have the camera finish taking
a full panorama this week. The pictures will share priority with
other data during communication sessions either directly from
the rover to Earth or relayed via NASA's Mars Global Surveyor
and Mars Odyssey orbiters.
Engineers are conducting test movements
of Spirit's high-gain, direct-to-Earth antenna today to learn
more about spikes in the amount of electricity drawn by one of
the antenna's motors when the antenna was first used Jan. 4,
said JPL's Jennifer Trosper, Spirit mission manager. Meanwhile,
the spacecraft will continue using the orbiter relays and its
low-gain, direct-to-Earth antenna.
The flight team is also finding ways to
prevent overheating of electronics inside Spirit. "Our robot
geologist was dressed a little warm for the weather on Mars,"
Trosper said. The atmosphere and surface at the landing site
this week are not as cold as anticipated. However, the rover's
temperatures are expected to drop when it rolls off its lander
platform and gets its wheels onto the ground.
Roll-off is now planned no sooner than
Jan. 12. One of the next steps in preparing for that event will
be to further retract a deflated airbag protruding from under
the lander, said JPL's Jessica Collisson, flight director. The
team tried out the planned retraction steps on a test rover at
JPL. "We're hoping we'll have similar results to what we
had in the test bed and we can get that airbag out of the way,"
Collisson said.
Seeing real panoramic camera pictures from
Mars, instead of just from tests of the camera inside laboratories
or spacecraft assembly areas, put the camera into new perspective
for Bell. "Until now, it's been like having an animal in
a cage, but now this beast is out, taking incredible pictures
in the native habitat it was designed to work in," he said.
He praised "the talented and heroic teamwork of people at
Cornell and around the country who helped develop this camera
-- its optics, filters, electronics."
Spirit's twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity,
will reach its landing site on the opposite side of Mars on Jan.
25 (EST and Universal Time; Jan. 24 PST). The rovers' task is
to explore for clues in rocks and soil about whether the past
environments in their landing areas were ever watery and suitable
to sustain life.
Source: NASA/JPL
press release
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