January 26, 2004
Opportunity
Runs Tests
During the second day on Mars for NASA's
Opportunity rover, key science instruments passed health tests
and the rover made important steps in communicating directly
with Earth.
On Earth this morning, scientists marveled
at a high-resolution color "postcard" of Opportunity's
surroundings. The mosaic of 24 frames from the panoramic camera
shows details from the edge of the lander to the distant horizon
beyond the rim of the rover's small home crater.
Panorama of Crater Interior
Click
for larger image
Courtesy NASA/JPL/Cornell
"We're looking out across a pretty
spectacular landscape," Dr. Jim Bell, lead scientist for
the rover panoramic cameras, said. "It's going to be a wonderful
area for geologists to explore with the rover."
The color view shows dark soil that brightened
where it was compacted by the rolling spacecraft, and an outcropping
of bedrock on the inside slope of the 20-meter (66-foot) crater
in which the rover sits. Opportunity will be commanded to finish
taking a 360-degree color panorama of the site during its third
Mars day, which began at 12:01 p.m. PST today.
Another major step planned for Opportunity's
third day is to begin using its high-gain antenna for communicating
directly with Earth at a high data rate. In preparation for this
transition, Opportunity found the Sun with its panoramic camera
yesterday. Once oriented by knowing the position of the Sun,
it can calculate how to point its high-gain antenna toward Earth.
"We're making steady progress in our
effort to get the wheels of the rover dirty," Mission Manager
Jim Erickson said. Still the earliest scenario for the rover
to drive off its lander platform is more than a week away.
Opportunity has tested the three scientific
sensing instruments on its robotic arm that will be used for
up-close examination of rocks and soil: the microscopic imager,
the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer for determining what elements
are present, and a Moessbauer spectrometer for identifying iron-containing
minerals.
Dr. Steve Squyres, principal investigator
for the science instruments on the rovers, had been especially
concerned about the Moessbauer spectrometer because tests conducted
while the spacecraft was on its way to Mars showed that an internal
calibration system was not working as intended. However, after
the rover landed on Mars, the instrument is functioning normally
again. The Moessbauer spectrometer's function for identifying
iron-bearing minerals will be important in the scientific goal
of determining the origin of iron-bearing hematite deposits in
the Meridiani Planum region selected as Opportunity's landing
site.
"We have a perfectly functioning Moessbauer
spectrometer," Squyres said, "and given that we are
now perched atop the hematite capital of the Solar System, that's
a good thing."
On the other side of Mars, restoration
efforts on the rover Spirit continue making progress. "We
have a patient in rehab, and we're nursing her back to health,"
Jennifer Trosper, mission manager, said.
Engineers found a way to stop Spirit's
computer from resetting itself about once an hour by putting
the spacecraft into a mode that avoids use of flash memory. Flash
memory is a type common in many electronic products, such as
digital cameras, for storing information even when the power
is off. The rover also has random-access memory, which cannot
hold information during the rover's overnight sleep. One of the
next steps planned is to erase from flash memory the files stored
there from the spacecraft's cruise to Mars from Earth. That is
intended to lessen the task of managing the flash memory files.
The rovers' main task is to explore their
landing sites during coming months for evidence in the rocks
and soil about whether the sites' past environments were ever
watery and possibly suitable for sustaining life.
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.
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