Opportunity completed the circumnavigation and full-circle imaging of the large meteorite “Block Island” and has resumed the long drive to Endeavour crater. On Sol 2001 (Sept. 9, 2009), the rover moved 9 meters (30 feet) around the meteorite to the fourth and fifth out of six planned positions. On the next sol Opportunity reached the sixth and final position around Block Island with a 3-meter (10-foot) bump.
August 1st, 2009
Opportunity Spies Unusual Rock — Large Meteorite? Universe Today
The Opportunity rover has come across an odd-shaped, large, dark rock, about 0.6 meters (2 feet) across on the surface of Mars, which may be a meteorite. The rover team spotted the rock called “Block Island,” on July 18, 2009, in the opposite direction from which it was driving. The team then had the rover do a hard right (not really, but you know what I mean) and backtrack some 250 meters (820 feet) to study it closer. Oppy has been studying the rock with its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to get composition measurements and to confirm if indeed it is a meteorite.
June 4th, 2009
Stuck Spirit Rover Images Its Belly
NASA’s Spirit rover, stuck in the Martian sand since May 6, has taken a picture of its underbelly to help mission engineers get a handle on the rover’s predicament.
Early last month, Spirit was continuing its journey around a low plateau called “Home Plate,” when it hit what one rover team member called an “insidious invisible rover trap.”
Since then, Spirit has been mired in the sandy soil up to its hubcaps, and rover engineers have been working to try to free the rover so that it can continue its now more than 5-year stint on the Martian surface.
May 12th, 2009
Spirit Rover Stuck in Martian Dirt
NASA’s Spirit rover has encountered a problem on Mars that is familiar to most drivers on Earth: it is stuck in dirt and spinning its wheels.
The five wheels that still rotate on the robot have been slipping severely in soft dirt during recent driving attempts, sinking the wheels about halfway into the ground.
The rover team of engineers and scientists has suspended driving Spirit temporarily while studying the ground around the rover and planning simulation tests of driving options with a test rover at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
“Spirit is in a very difficult situation,” said JPL’s John Callas, project manager for Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity. “We are proceeding methodically and cautiously. It may be weeks before we try moving Spirit again. Meanwhile, we are using Spirit’s scientific instruments to learn more about the physical properties of the soil that is giving us trouble.”
Both Spirit and Opportunity have been trundling across the Martian surface for more than five years now, far surpassing their original three-month missions. Opportunity is currently on the opposite side of the planet from Spirit, making its way to its next target, Endeavour Crater.
April 21st, 2009
Mars Spacecraft Teams on Alert for Dust-Storm Season
Heading into a period of the Martian year prone to major dust storms, the team operating NASA’s twin Mars rovers is taking advantage of eye-in-the-sky weather reports.
On April 21, Mars will be at the closest point to the sun in the planet’s 23-month, elliptical orbit. One month later, the planet’s equinox will mark the start of summer in Mars’ southern hemisphere. This atmospheric-warming combination makes the coming weeks the most likely time of the Martian year for dust storms severe enough to minimize activities of the rovers.
“Since the rovers are solar powered, the dust in the atmosphere is extremely important to us,” said Bill Nelson of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., chief of the engineering team for Spirit and Opportunity.
April 20th, 2009
NASA worries why Spirit has rebooted twice
The U.S. space agency says its Mars exploration rover Spirit inexplicably rebooted its computer at least twice last weekend.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said they were examining data received from Spirit to diagnose why the rover apparently rebooted its computer.
April 1st, 2009
Spirit sees phenomenal Martian vista Discover
I’ve been so taken with HiRISE lately that I haven’t written much about the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. They’ve been traversing Mars for almost six years now, taking tons of images and great in situ data. And now I feel remiss, because Spirit has stumbled on something very cool.
These images were taken on Sol 1858, just a few days ago (a Sol is a day on Mars, about a half hour longer than an Earth day). Spirit has been tooling around a high plateau called Home Plate, because it’s shaped like, well, a home plate in baseball. There’s evidence that water flowed in this area a long time ago, and as I looked over the images it was pretty obvious.
March 18th, 2009
Mars Rover Glimpses Far-Off Crater Destination
The panoramic camera on NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity has caught a first glimpse on the horizon of the uplifted rim of the big crater that has been Opportunity’s long-term destination for six months.
Opportunity’s twin, Spirit, also has a challenging destination, and last week switched to a different route for making progress to it.
Endeavour Crater, 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter, is still 7 miles (12 kilometers) away from Opportunity as the crow flies, and at least 30 percent farther away on routes mapped for evading hazards on the plain.
“We can now see our landfall on the horizon. It’s far away, but we can anticipate seeing it gradually look larger and larger as we get closer to Endeavour,” said Steve Squyres of Cornell University, and the principal investigator for the rovers’ science instruments. “We had a similar experience during the early months of the mission watching the Columbia Hills get bigger in the images from Spirit as Spirit drove toward them.”
Opportunity has already driven about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) since it climbed out of Victoria Crater last August after two years of studying Victoria, which is less than one-twentieth the size of Endeavour.
January 29th, 2009
Spirit Phone Home
It is spring at Gusev Crater on Mars, which would be good news for NASA’s Spirit Rover–except that Spirit, moving around after a long, hard winter, seems sporadically to have lost its mind.
Last Sunday, NASA says, the rover sent a signal confirming it had received its driving instructions for the day from earth, but when it next reported in, it had not moved.
That can happen for many reasons — it often has, in fact — but there was more going on. The rover had no recollection, if you will, of what it had been doing; it hadn’t recorded its main functions in its computer memory.
January 29th, 2009
Mars Rover’s Unexpected Behavior Puzzles NASA
NASA engineers are scratching their heads over some unexpected behavior from the long-lived Spirit rover, which began its sixth year exploring Mars this month.
Spirit failed to report in to engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., last weekend, prompting a series of diagnostic tests this week to hunt the glitch’s source. The aging Mars rover did not beam home a record of its weekend activities and, more puzzlingly, apparently failed to even record any of its actions on Sunday, mission managers said.