The way the rovers' cameras work makes it difficult, if not impossible, for them to record moving objects in colour. They would have to take three images through different coloured filters one after the other, which would be added together by NASA to produce a colour image. However with the clouds moving between each image what you would get would be a multi-coloured blur.

Looking at all those frames,one gets the feeling its to be in our future to be there someday in real 1st person reality.wheres that wayback machine so I can be one yr old today,maybe then I can go to Mars and meet the real Martians DONTEATUS

April 17, 2008



Though they're not attached to creatures of the deep, fins made of rock poke up above the surface and suggest past water on Mars. NASA's Opportunity rover took images of a thin fin on the edge of a rock in "Victoria Crater." The fin was rich in hematite, a mineral that often forms in the presence of water. Long ago, water circulating through a crack in the sandstone may have dissolved some of the surrounding material and filled the crack with mineral deposits. The filling resisted weathering while the surrounding rock eroded away. Today, the fin marks a place that used to be empty, and the space around it used to be rock! Scientists nicknamed the blade "Dorsal Fin" because it resembles the fin on the back of a fish.

Image courtesy:

Navigation camera/Panoramic camera/Microscopic imager

Robotic arm image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
False-color image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell
Microscopic image mosaic credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS

Higher Res Images:


Robotic Arm


False-color


Microscopic mosaic

Source: NASA/JPL - Mars Exploration Rovers - Spotlight On Mars

April 20, 2008

The first image shows a closeup view in black and white of the junction where two very clean solar cells intersect. The second image shows a closeup view of two solar cells heavily coated with dust; much of the dust has aggregated into tiny clumps all over the surface.


If Mars had an on-line Web site for ads, one of them might say something like this: "Wanted: Gentle space-age dust removal system to clean solar cells without leaving grit behind. Please direct inquiries to NASA."

NASA's Spirit rover has accumulated a lot of dust during four years of exploring Mars, especially following last year's dust storms. Only about one-third of incoming sunlight is able to penetrate dust on the rover's solar panels to be converted to electricity. As a result, Spirit is experiencing the lowest energy levels to date and accumulating a backlog of data waiting to be transmitted to Earth. The only available cleaning agent would be a timely gust of Martian wind!

Microscopic image credits:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS

Source: NASA/JPL - Mars Exploration Rovers - Spotlight On Mars

April 23, 2008

A small motor in the robotic arm of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity that began stalling occasionally more than two years ago has become more troublesome recently.

Rover engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are diagnosing why the motor, one of five in the robotic arm, stalled on April 14 after much less motion that day than in the case of several earlier stalls. They are also examining whether the motor can be used and assessing the impact on Opportunity's work if the motor were no longer usable.

The motor controls sideways motion at the shoulder joint of the rover robotic arm. Other motors provide up-and-down motion at the shoulder and maneuverability at the elbow and wrist. A turret at the end of the arm has four tools that the arm places in contact with rocks and soils to study their composition and texture.

"Even under the worst-case scenario for this motor, Opportunity still has the capability to do some contact science with the arm," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for the twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit. "The vehicle has quite a bit of versatility to continue the high-priority investigations in Victoria Crater and back out on the Meridiani plains after exiting the crater."

The performance of the motor in the past week is consistent with increased resistance in the electrical circuit, such as from degrading of wire in the winding, rather than a mechanical jam. Additional tests are planned for checking whether the apparent resistance is localized or intermittent.

Opportunity and Spirit landed on Mars in January 2004 to begin missions originally planned for three months. They have continued operating for more than four years, though each with some signs of aging.

Opportunity's balky shoulder motor began stalling occasionally in November 2005. The motor could still be operated by applying increased voltage. Engineers assessed it has an increased likelihood of becoming unusable, however, so the team changed its standard procedures for stowing and unstowing the arm.

Until then, on days when the arm would not be used, the team kept it stowed, resting on a hook under the front of the rover deck. Motion of the stall-prone shoulder motor is necessary to unstow the arm, so if the motor were to become unusable with the arm in the stowed position, the arm could not be deployed again. With diminished confidence in the balky motor, the team began unstowing the arm at the end of each day's drive rather than leaving it stowed overnight. This keeps the arm available for use even if the motor then stops working.

This spring, Opportunity is crossing an inner slope of Victoria Crater to reach the base of a cliff portion of the crater rim, a promontory called "Cape Verde." On April 14, Opportunity was backing out of a sandy patch encountered on the path toward Cape Verde from the area where the rover descended into the crater. As usual, the commands included unstowing the arm at the end of the day's short drive. The shoulder motor barely got the arm unstowed before stalling.

"We'll hold off backing out of the sand until after we've completed the diagnostic tests on the motor," Callas said. "The rover is stable and safe in its current situation, and not under any urgency. So we will take the time to act cautiously."



Source: NASA/JPL - Mars Exploration Rovers - Press Release

A mineral-scouting camera designed at ASU pointed scientists toward an ancient Martian hydrothermal system like those in Yellowstone National Park

Deposits of nearly pure silica discovered by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in Gusev Crater formed when volcanic steam or hot water (or maybe both) percolated through the ground. Such deposits are found around hydrothermal vents like those in Yellowstone National Park. That's the conclusion of planetary scientists working with data collected by the rover's Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES), developed at Arizona State University.

The silica discovery, announced briefly by NASA in 2007, is fully described in a multi-author paper that appears in the May 23, 2008 issue of the scientific journal Science. The lead author is Steven Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the rover science payload.

The silica finding turns a spotlight on an important site that may contain preserved traces of ancient Martian life.


credit: Arizona State University/Tom Story
HOT SPRING HUNTERS
Geologist Steve Ruff (right) found the silica deposits using the Mini-
TES mineral-finder on the Mars rover, while astrobiologist Jack
Farmer supplied comparison rock samples from hot springs and
fumarole environments on Earth.
(Click on the image for a larger version.)

"On Earth, hydrothermal deposits teem with life and the associated silica deposits typically contain fossil remains of microbes," says Jack Farmer, professor of astrobiology in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Farmer is one of the paper's co-authors.

"But we don't know if that's the case here," Farmer notes, "because the rovers don't carry instruments that can detect microscopic life." He adds, "What we can say is that this was once a habitable environment where liquid water and the energy needed for life were present."

NASA landed the two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, on opposite sides of the planet in January 2004 to look for rocks showing the presence of water. As of now, the rovers are more than four Earth years into a mission designed to last just three months. Despite dust collecting on their solar panels and mechanical wear-and-tear, both are continuing to explore.

Dawning realization

The silica discovery unfolded in slow motion as Spirit emerged from hibernation after its second Martian winter. The rover spent those months on the edge of a football-field-size feature dubbed Home Plate.


credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell University
BRIGHT SOIL
Silica-rich sites near Home Plate cluster together in this Navcam
frame taken on sol 1204 looking westward. The sites are named
for baseball players who belonged to an all-women's league in
the 1940s. The trench at Gertrude Weise was scraped by the rover's
stuck front wheel, revealing the white silica soil.
(Click on the image to download a larger version.)

Home Plate lies in the Columbia Hills, a range of low hills in the middle of Gusev Crater, which spans 100 miles (170 kilometers) wide. The Hills rise about 300 feet (100 meters) above the flat lava plain that fills Gusev, but their structure and origin remain unclear to scientists.

"We were going back to an area of exposed soil called the Tyrone site, which we didn't have time to investigate before winter began," notes Steven Ruff, a faculty research associate at ASU's Mars Space Flight Facility. Ruff is another of the paper's co-authors.

The Tyrone soil proved rich in sulfate minerals, a phenomenon seen by Spirit at other locations in the Columbia Hills, where Spirit has been exploring since late 2004. While sulfates can form in several ways, water is involved in most.

"While parked next to Tyrone, we used the Mini-TES to look at some nearby light-toned and knobby outcrops," says Ruff.

Ruff is the geologist in charge of day-to-day operations for Mini-TES, which was designed by ASU's Philip Christensen, a Regents' Professor of Geological Sciences and director of the Mars Space Flight Facility. Each rover is outfitted with a Mini-TES.

Silica surprise

Ruff continues, "It wasn't clear what we were seeing in the knobby outcrops because they were contaminated with dust and wind-blown soil. But I thought they might be silica-rich." Additional surveys with Mini-TES identified other outcrops, similarly contaminated but likewise hinting at silica.


credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell University
LAME FOOT
As the rover drove away from Tyrone, its jammed right front
wheel dug this trench; the site was later dubbed Gertrude Weise.
Scientists first thought the white soil was caused by sulfate
minerals, but the Mini-TES instrument revealed its high silica
content, and the rover returned to the site to confirm the
discovery.
(Click on the image to download a larger version.)

As it happened, the rover's jammed right front wheel inadvertently produced the "Aha!" moment. Ruff and others on the science team noticed that the stuck wheel had gouged a trench a few inches deep through the soil as the rover drove ahead in reverse, dragging the crippled wheel behind.

"The trench looked bright white," Ruff recalls, "but we thought initially it was just more sulfate minerals."

While parked nearby, however, Ruff got curious. "We aimed Mini-TES at the trench and it showed a clear silica spectrum. This prompted us to drive back to it, where the rover's Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer told us the white soil was more than 90 percent silica. That's a record high for silica on Mars."

Fumaroles and hot springs

Making such pure silica requires a lot of water, says Ruff. "On Earth, the only way to have this kind of silica enrichment is by hot water reacting with rocks."


credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
OVERVIEW
The silica-rich deposits occur in the Eastern Valley, flanking Home
Plate in the inner basin of the Columbia Hills. The rover spent its
second Martian winter parked on Low Ridge. Site A near Tyrone
is where Mini-TES spotted the first silica-rich outcrop, and sites B
and C are other silica-rich areas; the Gertrude Weise trench site
lies at D. This perspective view, made with a digital elevation model
and frame PSP_001777_1655_red from the HiRISE camera on the
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, looks southwest.
(Click on the image to download a larger version.)

This, Ruff says, links the silica with Home Plate, which the rover team already knew was a volcanic feature. "Home Plate came from an explosive volcanic event with water or ice being involved," he explains. "We saw where rocks were thrown into the air and landed to make small indentations in the soft, wet ash sediment around the vent."

Once alerted what to look for, the scientists found more silica in many places nearby.

As Ruff explains, "It's not just the soil in a trench in one place. It's a broader story of outcrops that extend 50 meters [about 150 feet] away from Home Plate. It's not a small scale, modest phenomenon."

The combination of geothermal heat and water produces a hydrothermal system like that which powers the hot springs, geysers, mudpots, and fumaroles (steam vents) of Yellowstone National Park.

Capturing evidence

Astrobiologist Farmer helped with the mineral identification by supplying a variety of high silica rock samples from his laboratory collection. They included rocks from hot spring and fumarole deposits in Yellowstone and New Zealand. These rocks provided reference spectra for Mini-TES. "The best fit we got was with siliceous sinter," he says, referring to deposits of "opal," a type of amorphous silica laid down by hot springs.


credit: Arizona State University/Jack Farmer
EARTH ANALOG?
Silica layers coat bacterial filaments in a sample from Excelsior
Geyser Crater, Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park.
The silica coating preserves microbial structures. Scientists hunting
for a Martian biology might start by searching for similar structures
in Martian hot spring deposits.
(Click on the image to download a larger version.)

Farmer explains that hydrothermal systems generally precipitate silica and other minerals as heated groundwater rises, cools, and gives off dissolved gases. "If there were organisms living there," he says, "our terrestrial experience shows that microbes can easily be entrapped and preserved in the deposits." Silica, he notes, is an excellent medium for capturing and preserving traces of microbial life.

Whether Mars ever had life is unknown. But if there was once a Martian biosphere, both Ruff and Farmer say the deposits around fumaroles and hot springs are ideal places to start hunting for it.

Although the microscopic imagers on the current rovers cannot resolve the microbial remains seen in terrestrial hot spring deposits, Farmer notes that the new microscopic imagers now in development for future rovers should let scientists detect such features in situ.

Says Farmer, "We just need to deliver such instruments to the right place. The discoveries at Home Plate have helped us know where to go next."

Ruff adds, "This discovery has us really excited. This site is clearly the best example of a habitable environment that we've found in Gusev."

Source: Mars Space Flight Facility, Arizona State University

June 24, 2008



Imagine having only enough energy to run a microwave oven for seven minutes each day. Think of it as your energy diet -- it's all you have to survive. Basically, that's what NASA's Mars rover, Spirit, experienced in June 2008.

Last summer's dust storms left a sun-blocking haze in the atmosphere and a thick sunscreen of particles on Spirit's solar panels. The nights grew longer and the days colder with the onset of winter. The dusty coating got thicker as more dust fell from the sky.

To save energy, rover planners cut back on communications and rover awake time. They made heating a top priority to keep Spirit's battery and a mineral-detection instrument alive.

It paid off. Now that Spirit has survived the June 25 winter solstice in the southern hemisphere, winter will give way to spring. Spirit will have fewer dietary restrictions as energy levels improve.

Images courtesy of: Panoramic camera/Microscopic imager

Solar panel image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Microscopic image credit (closeup of dust and wiring): NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/USGS

Higher Res Images:


Full Size Still Image


Full Size Still Image


Full Size Still Image

Source: NASA/JPL - Mars Exploration Rovers - Spotlight On Mars

July 28, 2008



If you've ever gotten stuck while driving on a sandy beach or road, you can imagine Opportunity's recent experience on Mars. At times, the rover's wheels have done more slipping than advancing. Like a hardy dune buggy, the rover keeps driving.

Opportunity's goal is to study rocks exposed in a cliff inside "Victoria Crater." Those rocks contain clues to the history of water. Surrounded by slopes covered with loose material, they have not been easy to reach. Opportunity has slipped to the right and churned up small mounds of soil. At one point, a potato-sized rock nearly got lodged in one of its wheels.

Rather than give up, Opportunity's next plan is to drive upslope and move sideways toward a rock shaped somewhat like the state of Nevada. After more than 7 miles and 4 years of exploration, this rover doesn't cut and run!

Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Source: NASA/JPL - Mars Exploration Rovers - Spotlight On Mars

NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity Climbing out of Crater
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration rover Opportunity is heading back out to the Red Planet's surrounding plains nearly a year after descending into a large Martian crater to examine exposed ancient rock layers.

"We've done everything we entered Victoria Crater to do and more," said Bruce Banerdt, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Banerdt is project scientist for Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit.


This 180-degree panorama shows the southward
vista from the location where Spirit is spending
its third Martian winter inside Mars' Gusev Crater.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

"We've done everything we entered Victoria Crater to do and more," said Bruce Banerdt, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Banerdt is project scientist for Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit.

Having completed its job in the crater, Opportunity is now preparing to inspect loose cobbles on the plains. Some of these rocks, approximately fist-size and larger, were thrown long distances when objects hitting Mars blasted craters deeper than Victoria into the Red Planet. Opportunity has driven past scores of cobbles but examined only a few.

"Our experience tells us there's lots of diversity among the cobbles," said Scott McLennan of the State University of New York, Stony Brook. McLennan is a long-term planning leader for the rover science team. "We want to get a better characterization of them. A statistical sampling from examining more of them will be important for understanding the geology of the area."

Opportunity entered Victoria Crater on Sept. 11, 2007, after a year of scouting from the rim. Once a drivable inner slope was identified, the rover used contact instruments on its robotic arm to inspect the composition and textures of accessible layers.

The rover then drove close to the base of a cliff called "Cape Verde," part of the crater rim, to capture detailed images of a stack of layers 6 meters (20 feet) tall. The information Opportunity has returned about the layers in Victoria suggest the sediments were deposited by wind and then altered by groundwater.

"The patterns broadly resemble what we saw at the smaller craters Opportunity explored earlier," McLennan said. "By looking deeper into the layering, we are looking farther back in time." The crater stretches approximately 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter and is deeper than any other seen by Opportunity.

Engineers are programming Opportunity to climb out of the crater at the same place it entered. A spike in electric current drawn by the rover's left front wheel last month quickly settled discussions about whether to keep trying to edge even closer to the base of Cape Verde on a steep slope. The spike resembled one seen on Spirit when that rover lost the use of its right front wheel in 2006. Opportunity's six wheels are all still working after 10 times more use than they were designed to perform, but the team took the spike in current as a reminder that one could quit.

"If Opportunity were driving with only five wheels, like Spirit, it probably would never get out of Victoria Crater," said JPL's Bill Nelson, a rover mission manager. "We also know from experience with Spirit that if Opportunity were to lose the use of a wheel after it is out on the level ground, mobility should not be a problem."

Opportunity now drives with its robotic arm out of the stowed position. A shoulder motor has degraded over the years to the point where the rover team chose not to risk having it stop working while the arm is stowed on a hook. If the motor were to stop working with the arm unstowed, the arm would remain usable.

Spirit has resumed observations after surviving the harshest weeks of southern Martian winter. The rover won't move from its winter haven until the amount of solar energy available to it increases a few months from now. The rover has completed half of a full-circle color panorama from its sun-facing location on the north edge of a low plateau called "Home Plate."

"Both rovers show signs of aging, but they are both still capable of exciting exploration and scientific discovery," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for Spirit and Opportunity.

The team's plan for future months is to drive Spirit south of Home Plate to an area where the rover last year found some bright, silica-rich soil. This could be possible evidence of effects of hot water.

For images and information about NASA's Opportunity and Spirit Mars rovers, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers.

Media contact: Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

2008-166

Source: NASA - MER - News

Southern Half of Spirit's 'Bonestell' Panorama

08.26.08

This 180-degree panorama shows the southward vista from the location where Spirit is spending its third Martian winter inside Mars' Gusev Crater. The rover's overwintering location is on the northern edge of a low plateau informally called "Home Plate," which is about 80 meters or 260 feet in diameter.

This view combines 168 different exposures taken with Spirit's panoramic Camera (Pancam) -- 42 pointings with 4 filters at each pointing. Spirit took the first of the images that are combined into this view during the mission's 1,477th Martian day, or sol, (February 28, 2008). That was two weeks after the rover made its last move to reach the location where it would stop driving for the winter. Solar energy at Gusev Crater is so limited during the Martian southern hemisphere winter that Spirit does not generate enough electricity to drive, nor even enough to take many images per day. The last frame for this mosaic was taken on Sol 1,599 (July 2, 2008). The rover team plans for Spirit to finish taking images for the northern half of the scene during the Martian spring.

The northwestern edge of Home Plate is visible in the right foreground. The blockier, more sharply shadowed texture there is layered sandstone whose layering is tilted inward toward the edge of the Home Plate platform. A dark rock on top of Home Plate in that area is a porous volcanic basalt unlike rocks nearby. The northeastern edge of Home Plate is visible in the left foreground. Spirit first climbed onto Home Plate on that region, in early 2006.

Rover tracks from driving by Spirit are visible on Home plate in the center and right of the image. These were made during Spirit's second exploration on top of the plateau, which began when Spirit climbed onto the southern edge of Home Plate in September, 2007.

In the center foreground, the turret of tools at the end of Spirit's robotic arm appears in duplicate because the arm was repositioned between the days when the images making up that part of the mosaic were taken.

On the horizon, the highest point is "McCool Hill." This is one of the seven larger hills in the Columbia Hills range. Home Plate is in the inner basin of the range, between McCool Hill to the south and "Husband Hill" to the north. To the right of McCool Hill, in the center of the image and closer to Home Plate, is a smaller hill capped with a light-toned outcrop. This hill is called "Von Braun," and it is a possible destination the rover team has discussed for the next season of driving by Spirit, after the solar energy level increases in the Martian spring. The flat horizon in the right-hand portion of the panorama is the basaltic plain onto which Spirit landed on Jan. 4, 2004.

This is an approximate true-color, red-green-blue composite panorama generated from images taken through the Pancam's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer filters. This "natural color" view is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if we were there and able to see it with our own eyes.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

› High resolution TIF (42Mb)

Source: NASA - MER - Images

Southern Half of Spirit's 'Bonestell' Panorama (Stereo)

08.26.08

This stereo, 180-degree panorama shows the southward vista from the location where Spirit is spending its third Martian winter inside Mars' Gusev Crater. The rover's overwintering location is on the northern edge of a low plateau informally called "Home Plate," which is about 80 meters or 260 feet in diameter.

The view combines a stereo pair so that it appears three-dimensional when seen through blue-red glasses.

Spirit took the first of the images that are combined into this view during the mission's 1,477th Martian day, or sol, (February 28, 2008). That was two weeks after the rover made its last move to reach the location where it would stop driving for the winter. Solar energy at Gusev Crater is so limited during the Martian southern hemisphere winter that Spirit does not generate enough electricity to drive, nor even enough to take many images per day. The last frame for this mosaic was taken on Sol 1,599 (July 2, 2008). The rover team plans for Spirit to finish taking images for the northern half of the scene during the Martian spring.

The northwestern edge of Home Plate is visible in the right foreground. The blockier, more sharply shadowed texture there is layered sandstone whose layering is tilted inward toward the edge of the Home Plate platform. A dark rock on top of Home Plate in that area is a porous volcanic basalt unlike rocks nearby. The northeastern edge of Home Plate is visible in the left foreground. Spirit first climbed onto Home Plate on that region, in early 2006.

Rover tracks from driving by Spirit are visible on Home plate in the center and right of the image. These were made during Spirit's second exploration on top of the plateau, which began when Spirit climbed onto the southern edge of Home Plate in September, 2007.

In the center foreground, the turret of tools at the end of Spirit's robotic arm appears in duplicate because the arm was repositioned between the days when the images making up that part of the mosaic were taken.

On the horizon, the highest point is "McCool Hill." This is one of the seven larger hills in the Columbia Hills range. Home Plate is in the inner basin of the range, between McCool Hill to the south and "Husband Hill" to the north. To the right of McCool Hill, in the center of the image and closer to Home Plate, is a smaller hill capped with a light-toned outcrop. This hill is called "Von Braun," and it is a possible destination the rover team has discussed for the next season of driving by Spirit, after the solar energy level increases in the Martian spring. The flat horizon in the right-hand portion of the panorama is the basaltic plain onto which Spirit landed on Jan. 4, 2004.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Source: NASA - MER - Images

Southern Half of Spirit's 'Bonestell' Panorama (False Color)

08.26.08

This 180-degree panorama shows the southward vista from the location where Spirit is spending its third Martian winter inside Mars' Gusev Crater. The rover's overwintering location is on the northern edge of a low plateau informally called "Home Plate," which is about 80 meters or 260 feet in diameter.

This view combines 168 different exposures taken with Spirit's panoramic Camera (Pancam) -- 42 pointings with 4 filters at each pointing. Spirit took the first of the images that are combined into this view during the mission's 1,477th Martian day, or sol, (February 28, 2008). That was two weeks after the rover made its last move to reach the location where it would stop driving for the winter. Solar energy at Gusev Crater is so limited during the Martian southern hemisphere winter that Spirit does not generate enough electricity to drive, nor even enough to take many images per day. The last frame for this mosaic was taken on Sol 1,599 (July 2, 2008). The rover team plans for Spirit to finish taking images for the northern half of the scene during the Martian spring.

The northwestern edge of Home Plate is visible in the right foreground. The blockier, more sharply shadowed texture there is layered sandstone whose layering is tilted inward toward the edge of the Home Plate platform. A dark rock on top of Home Plate in that area is a porous volcanic basalt unlike rocks nearby. The northeastern edge of Home Plate is visible in the left foreground. Spirit first climbed onto Home Plate on that region, in early 2006.

Rover tracks from driving by Spirit are visible on Home plate in the center and right of the image. These were made during Spirit's second exploration on top of the plateau, which began when Spirit climbed onto the southern edge of Home Plate in September, 2007.

In the center foreground, the turret of tools at the end of Spirit's robotic arm appears in duplicate because the arm was repositioned between the days when the images making up that part of the mosaic were taken.

On the horizon, the highest point is "McCool Hill." This is one of the seven larger hills in the Columbia Hills range. Home Plate is in the inner basin of the range, between McCool Hill to the south and "Husband Hill" to the north. To the right of McCool Hill, in the center of the image and closer to Home Plate, is a smaller hill capped with a light-toned outcrop. This hill is called "Von Braun," and it is a possible destination the rover team has discussed for the next season of driving by Spirit, after the solar energy level increases in the Martian spring. The flat horizon in the right-hand portion of the panorama is the basaltic plain onto which Spirit landed on Jan. 4, 2004.

This is a false-color, red-green-blue composite panorama generated from images taken through the Pancam's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer filters. The false color enhances visibility of differences among the types of rock and soil material in the image.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Source: NASA - MER - Images

NASA Mars Rover Opportunity Ascends to Level Ground
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has climbed out of the large crater that it had been examining from the inside since last September.

"The rover is back on flat ground," an engineer who drives it, Paolo Bellutta of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, announced to the mission's international team of scientists and engineers.


NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity
climbed out of "Victoria Crater" following the tracks
it had made when it descended into the 800-meter-
diameter (half-mile-diameter) bowl nearly a year
earlier.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Opportunity used its own entry tracks from nearly a year ago as the path for a drive of 6.8 meters (22 feet) bringing the rover out over the top of the inner slope and through a sand ripple at the lip of Victoria Crater. The exit drive, conducted late Thursday, completed a series of drives covering 50 meters (164 feet) since the rover team decided about a month ago that it had completed its scientific investigations inside the crater.

"We're headed to the next adventure out on the plains of Meridiani," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for Opportunity and its twin Mars rover, Spirit. "We safely got into the crater, we completed our exploration there, and we safely got out. We were concerned that any wheel failure on our aging rover could have left us trapped inside the crater."

The Opportunity mission has focused on Victoria Crater for more than half of the 55 months since the rover landed in the Meridiani Planum region of equatorial Mars. The crater spans about 800 meters (half a mile) in diameter and reveals rock layers that hold clues to environmental conditions of the area through an extended period when the rocks were formed and altered.

The team selected Victoria as the next major destination after Opportunity exited smaller Endurance Crater in late 2004. The ensuing 22-month traverse to Victoria included stopping for studies along the route and escaping from a sand trap. The rover first reached the rim of Victoria in September 2007. For nearly a year, it then explored partway around the rim, checking for the best entry route and examining from above the rock layers exposed in a series of promontories that punctuate the crater perimeter.

Now that Opportunity has finished exploring Victoria Crater and returned to the surrounding plain, the rover team plans to use tools on the robotic arm in coming months to examine an assortment of cobbles -- rocks about fist-size and larger -- that may have been thrown from impacts that dug craters too distant for Opportunity to reach.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the rovers for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For images and information about NASA's Opportunity and Spirit Mars rovers, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov.

Media contact: Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

2008-168

Source: NASA - MER - News

Looking Back at Arena of Exploration

08.29.08

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed out of "Victoria Crater" following the tracks it had made when it descended into the 800-meter-diameter (half-mile-diameter) bowl nearly a year earlier.

The rover's navigation camera captured this view back into the crater just after finishing a 6.8-meter (22-foot) drive that brought Opportunity out onto level ground during the mission's 1,634th Martian day, or sol (Aug. 28, 2008).

The rover laid down the first tracks at this entry and exit point during its 1,291st sol (Sept. 11, 2007), after about a year of exploring around the outside of Victoria Crater for the best access route to the interior. On that sol, Opportunity drove a short distance into the crater and then backed out to check that the footing was good enough to trust this point as an exit route when the work in the crater was finished. Two sols later, Opportunity drove in again for its extended investigation of the rock layers exposed inside the crater.

While inside, the rover spent several months using the contact instruments on its robotic arm to analyze the composition of the rock layers it could drive across on the surface of the upper slope. Then Opportunity drove close to the base of the "Cape Verde" promontory that forms part of the crater rim and appears in the upper center of this image. From that perspective, the rover used its panoramic camera to examine details of layering in the 6-meter-tall (20-foot-tall) cliff.

For scale, the distance between the parallel tracks left by the rover's wheels is about 1 meter (39 inches) from the middle of one track to the middle of the other. After getting past the top of the inner slope of the crater, the Sol 1634 drive also got through a sand ripple where the tracks appear deepest.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

› Larger image TIF (1Mb)

Source: NASA - MER - Images

I admire your dedication to astronomy news Waspie

Keep up the good work!

NASA's Mars Rover to Head Toward Bigger Crater
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Rover Opportunity is setting its sights on a crater more than 20 times larger than its home for the past two years.

To reach the crater the rover team calls Endeavour, Opportunity would need to drive approximately 12 kilometers (7 miles) to the southeast, matching the total distance it has traveled since landing on Mars in early 2004. The rover climbed out of Victoria Crater earlier this month.


The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration
Rover Opportunity has chosen southeast as the
direction for the rover's next extended journey,
toward a crater more than 20 times wider than
"Victoria Crater."
Image credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

"We may not get there, but it is scientifically the right direction to go anyway," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit. "This crater is staggeringly large compared to anything we've seen before."

Getting there would yield a look inside a bowl 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) across. Scientists expect to see a much deeper stack of rock layers than those examined by Opportunity in Victoria Crater.

"I would love to see that view from the rim," Squyres said. "But even if we never get there, as we move southward we expect to be getting to younger and younger layers of rock on the surface. Also, there are large craters to the south that we think are sources of cobbles that we want to examine out on the plain. Some of the cobbles are samples of layers deeper than Opportunity will ever see, and we expect to find more cobbles as we head toward the south."

Opportunity will have to pick up the pace to get there. The rover team estimates Opportunity may be able to travel about 110 yards each day it is driven toward the Endeavour crater. Even at that pace, the journey could take two years.

"This is a bolder, more aggressive objective than we have had before," said John Callas, the project manager for both Mars rovers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's tremendously exciting. It's new science. It's the next great challenge for these robotic explorers."

Opportunity, like Spirit, is well past its expected lifetime on Mars, and might not keep working long enough to reach the crater. However, two new resources not available during the 4-mile drive toward Victoria Crater in 2005 and 2006 are expected to aid in this new trek.

One is imaging from orbit of details smaller than the rover itself, using the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which arrived at the Red Planet in 2006.

"HiRISE allows us to identify drive paths and potential hazards on the scale of the rover along the route," Callas said. "This is a great example of how different parts of NASA's Mars Exploration Program reinforce each other."

Other advantages come from a new version of flight software uplinked to Opportunity and Spirit in 2006, boosting their ability to autonomously choose routes and avoid hazards such as sand dunes.

During its first year on Mars, Opportunity found geological evidence that the area where it landed had surface and underground water in the distant past. The rover's explorations since have added information about how that environment changed over time. Finding rock layers above or below the layers already examined adds windows into later or earlier periods of time.

NASA's JPL built and manage the rovers and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

For images and information about Spirit and Opportunity, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/rovers.

Media contact: Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov

Dwayne Brown
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
dwayne.c.brown@nasa.gov

2008-176

Source: NASA - MER - News

Bigger Crater Farther South of 'Victoria' on Mars

09.22.08

The team operating NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has chosen southeast as the direction for the rover's next extended journey, toward a crater more than 20 times wider than "Victoria Crater." Opportunity exited Victoria Crater on Aug. 28, 2008, after nearly a year investigating the interior.

The crater to the southeast is about 22 kilometers (13.7 miles) in diameter and about 300 meters (1,000 feet) deep, exposing a much thicker stack of rock layers than those examined in Victoria Crater.

The rover team informally calls the bigger crater "Endeavour" and emphasizes that Opportunity may well never reach it. The rover has already operated more than 18 times longer than originally planned, and the distance to the big crater, about 12 kilometers (7 miles) matches the total distance Opportunity has driven since landing in early 2004. Driving southeastward is expected to take Opportunity to exposures of younger rock layers than is has previously seen and to provide access to rocks on the plain that were thrown long distances by impacts that excavated even deeper, more distant craters.

The crater that Opportunity will drive toward dominates this orbital view from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. The much smaller Victoria Crater is the most prominent circle near the upper left corner of the image. This view is a mosaic of about 50 separate visible-light images taken by THEMIS.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Mars Odyssey and Mars Exploration Rover missions for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. THEMIS was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/ASU

Full resolution (1.9 Kb - no labels)

Source: NASA - MER - Images