January 12, 2004
360 Degree
Panoramic Photo Assembled
The first 360-degree color view from NASA's
Spirit Mars Exploration Rover presents a range of tempting targets
from nearby rocks to hills on the horizon.
"The whole panorama is there before
us," rover science team member Dr. Michael Malin of Malin
Space Science Systems, San Diego, said. "It's a great opening
to the next stage of our mission."
Panorama of Spirit's Landing
Site
Click
for larger image
Courtesy NASA/JPL/Cornell.
The color image is a mosaic stitched from
225 frames taken by Spirit's panoramic camera. It spans 75 frames
across, three frames tall, with color information from shots
through three different filters. The images were calibrated at
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., home institution for Dr. Jim
Bell, panoramic camera team leader.
Malin said, "Seeing the panorama totally
assembled instead of in individual pieces gives a much greater
appreciation for the position of things and helps in developing
a sense of direction. I find it easier to visualize where I am
on Mars when I can look at different directions in one view.
For a field geologist, it's exactly the kind of thing you want
to look at to understand where you are."
Another new image product from Spirit shows
a patch of intriguing soil near the lander in greater detail
than an earlier view of the same area. Scientists have dubbed
the patch "Magic Carpet" for how some soil behaved
when scraped by a retracting airbag.
"It has been detached and folded like
a piece of carpet sliding across the floor," science-team
member Dr. John Grotzinger of Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, said.
The mission team plans to drive the rover
over to this site to look for additional clues about the composition
of the martian soil.
Spirit's flight team at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., continues making progress toward
getting the rover off its lander platform, but expected it to
happen no sooner than early Thursday morning. "We're about
to kick the baby bird out of its nest," said JPL's Kevin
Burke, lead mechanical engineer for the rover's egress off the
lander.
Spirit's next step in preparing to drive
onto the surface of Mars is to sever its final connection with
the lander platform by firing a cable cutter, which Burke described
as "an explosive guillotine." The planned sequence
after that is a turn in place of 115 degrees clockwise, completed
in three steps over the next two days. If no obstacles are seen
from images taken partway through that turn, drive-off is planned
toward the northwestern compass point of 286 degrees.
Spirit landed on Mars Jan. 3 after a seven-month
journey. Its task is to spend the next three months exploring
rocks and soil for clues about whether the past environment in
Gusev Crater was ever watery and suitable to sustain life. Spirit's
twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, will reach Mars Jan.
24 PST (Jan. 25 Univeral Time and EST) to begin a similar examination
of a site on a broad plain called Meridiani Planum, on the opposite
side of the planet from Gusev Crater.
NASA JPL, a division of the California
Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration
Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington.
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