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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040114/sc_nm/space_mars_dc_2
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U.S. Rover Spirit Ready for Its Martian Excursion
Wed Jan 14, 6:08 PM ET Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Gina Keating
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - All systems were "go" on Wednesday for the U.S. robotic rover to take its first drive on the surface of Mars and conduct an experiment with a European space probe circling the planet, scientists at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
Reuters Photo
AP Photo
Slideshow: Mars Exploration
Explorer Crosses Mars' Surface
(Reuters Video)
The rover Spirit is set to roll off the lander at about midnight PST on Wednesday night (3 a.m. EST) in a 9.8 ft jaunt that should take 78 seconds.
"All of the activities were completed perfectly. All of the subsystems are performing nominally," mission manager Jennifer Trosper said on Wednesday morning at the end of Spirit's 11th day on Mars, or sol 11.
"There's nothing left to do on the lander for Spirit," she added. The NASA team expects to see images of the rover's last backward glance at its lander at about 1:40 a.m. PST (4:40 a.m. EST) on Thursday.
When it reaches the ground, Spirit will pause to point its mini-thermal emission spectrometer (mini-TES) up at the sky at the same time the European orbiter Mars Express snaps the same type of images from about 186 miles overhead.
The simultaneous images of the martian atmosphere from opposite vantage points will provide scientists with data of unprecedented detail about the composition of the Martian atmosphere, deputy project scientist Albert Haldemann said.
"We're doing something else historic tonight. For the first time we're going to look up while someone else is looking down," Haldemann said. "That is of great value to us."
Mars Express, the mothership of the European Space Agency's missing lander Beagle 2, will be near the low point of its elliptical orbit around Mars when it takes the images with the French-made imaging spectrometer Omega, he said.
The Express carries other instruments that NASA scientists want to use to enhance their knowledge of the minerals and topography in the massive Gusev Crater where Spirit landed on Jan. 3, deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson said.
The spectrographic images from Express can aid Spirit in its search for water-bearing minerals by giving scientists an overhead perspective they cannot get with the rover's onboard instruments, Arvidson said.
When Spirit leaves the lander, it will encounter a 3.9 inch drop at the end of the ramp to the planet's surface -- a distance that is well within the rover's capabilities, Kevin Burke, egress mechanical lead, said.
"We're sitting exactly where we want to be. We're ready to get on with things," Burke said.
The Spirit team "woke up" the rover at 8:45 a.m. Mars time (about 8 p.m. PST) for the past two days with theme songs aimed at positioning it for egress: "Turn, Turn, Turn" by The Birds, "You Spin Me Round," by Dead or Alive, and "Round and Round" by Ratt, Trosper said.
Onboard cameras showed that Spirit successfully completed a 115-degree rotation atop the lander and is poised to drive down a rear ramp toward a crater 820 ft to the northeast.
The rover first will stop in place for two to three days to test soil and rocks at its egress point and to do "clean-up" operations associated with the shift to a mobile science mission, Trosper said.
I've highlighted the part.
U.S. Rover Spirit Ready for Its Martian Excursion
Wed Jan 14, 6:08 PM ET Add Science - Reuters to My Yahoo!
By Gina Keating
PASADENA, Calif. (Reuters) - All systems were "go" on Wednesday for the U.S. robotic rover to take its first drive on the surface of Mars and conduct an experiment with a European space probe circling the planet, scientists at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
Reuters Photo
AP Photo
Slideshow: Mars Exploration
Explorer Crosses Mars' Surface
(Reuters Video)
The rover Spirit is set to roll off the lander at about midnight PST on Wednesday night (3 a.m. EST) in a 9.8 ft jaunt that should take 78 seconds.
"All of the activities were completed perfectly. All of the subsystems are performing nominally," mission manager Jennifer Trosper said on Wednesday morning at the end of Spirit's 11th day on Mars, or sol 11.
"There's nothing left to do on the lander for Spirit," she added. The NASA team expects to see images of the rover's last backward glance at its lander at about 1:40 a.m. PST (4:40 a.m. EST) on Thursday.
When it reaches the ground, Spirit will pause to point its mini-thermal emission spectrometer (mini-TES) up at the sky at the same time the European orbiter Mars Express snaps the same type of images from about 186 miles overhead.
The simultaneous images of the martian atmosphere from opposite vantage points will provide scientists with data of unprecedented detail about the composition of the Martian atmosphere, deputy project scientist Albert Haldemann said.
"We're doing something else historic tonight. For the first time we're going to look up while someone else is looking down," Haldemann said. "That is of great value to us."
Mars Express, the mothership of the European Space Agency's missing lander Beagle 2, will be near the low point of its elliptical orbit around Mars when it takes the images with the French-made imaging spectrometer Omega, he said.
The Express carries other instruments that NASA scientists want to use to enhance their knowledge of the minerals and topography in the massive Gusev Crater where Spirit landed on Jan. 3, deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson said.
The spectrographic images from Express can aid Spirit in its search for water-bearing minerals by giving scientists an overhead perspective they cannot get with the rover's onboard instruments, Arvidson said.
When Spirit leaves the lander, it will encounter a 3.9 inch drop at the end of the ramp to the planet's surface -- a distance that is well within the rover's capabilities, Kevin Burke, egress mechanical lead, said.
"We're sitting exactly where we want to be. We're ready to get on with things," Burke said.
The Spirit team "woke up" the rover at 8:45 a.m. Mars time (about 8 p.m. PST) for the past two days with theme songs aimed at positioning it for egress: "Turn, Turn, Turn" by The Birds, "You Spin Me Round," by Dead or Alive, and "Round and Round" by Ratt, Trosper said.
Onboard cameras showed that Spirit successfully completed a 115-degree rotation atop the lander and is poised to drive down a rear ramp toward a crater 820 ft to the northeast.
The rover first will stop in place for two to three days to test soil and rocks at its egress point and to do "clean-up" operations associated with the shift to a mobile science mission, Trosper said.
