January 14, 2004
Rover Set
to Leave Lander Platform
NASA's Spirit completed a three-stage turn
early today, the last step before a drive planned early Thursday
to take the rover off its lander platform and onto martian soil
for the first time.
"We are very excited about where we
are today. We've just completed the exploration of our lander
and we're ready to explore Mars," said Kevin Burke of NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., leader of the engineering
team that planned the rover's egress from the lander. "We
are headed in a north-northwest direction. That is our exit path,
and we're sitting just where we want to be."
Artist's Rendition of Rover
Spirit on Mars
Click
for larger image
Courtesy NASA/JPL
Late tonight, mission managers at JPL plan
to send the command for Spirit to drive forward 3 meters (10
feet), enough to get all six wheels onto the soil.
After the move, one of the rover's first
jobs will be to locate the Sun with its panoramic camera and
calculate from the Sun's position how to point its main antenna
at Earth, JPL's Jennifer Trosper, mission manager, explained.
On Friday, Spirit's science team will take
advantage of special possibilities presented by the European
Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter flying almost directly overhead,
about 300 kilometers (186 miles) high. Mars Express successfully
entered orbit around Mars last month. Spirit will be looking
up while Mars Express uses three instruments to look down.
"This is an historic opportunity,"
said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis,
deputy principal investigator for the science instruments on
Spirit and on its twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity. "The
intent is to get observations from above and to get observations
from below at the same time to do the best possible job of determining
the dynamics of the atmosphere." The Mars Express observations
are also expected to supplement earlier information from two
NASA Mars orbiters about the surface minerals and landforms in
Spirit's neighborhood within Gusev Crater.
Mars Express will be looking down with
a high-resolution stereo camera, a spectrometer for identifying
minerals in infrared and visible wavelengths, and another spectrometer
for studying atmospheric circulation and composition. Spirit
will be looking up with its panoramic camera and its infrared
spectrometer.
Dr. Michael Smith of NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., reported how Spirit's miniature
thermal emission spectrometer can be used to assess the temperatures
in Mars' atmosphere from near the planet's surface to several
kilometers or miles high. Spirit's measurements are most sensitive
for the lower portion of the atmosphere, while Mars Express'
measurements will be most sensitive for the upper atmosphere,
he said.
Spirit arrived at Mars Jan. 3 (EST and
PST; Jan. 4 Universal Time) after a seven-month journey. In coming
weeks and months, according to plans, it will be exploring for
clues in rocks and soil to decipher whether the past environment
in Gusev Crater was ever watery and possibly suitable to sustain
life.
Opportunity will reach Mars on Jan. 25
(EST and Universal Time; 9:05 p.m., Jan. 24, PST) to begin a
similar examination of a site on the opposite side of the planet
from Gusev Crater. As of Thursday morning, Opportunity will have
flown 438 million kilometers (272 million miles) since launch
and will still have 18 million kilometers (11 million miles)
to go before landing.
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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Travel Plans: See Crater, Head for Hills
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