NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity endured a martian winter night despite being put into a new energy-saving but risky “deep sleep” mode, a mission flight director said Friday.
May 27th, 2004
Mars Rover Output Starts to Dim Discovery News
The slow and inevitable build-up of dust on the solar panels of the Mars rover Opportunity is prompting scientists to cut overnight heating to the vehicle in hopes of eking out a few more hours for investigations by day.
May 24th, 2004
Spirit Rover’s Next Steps
Mission planners for NASA’s Spirit rover on Mars are using this view from above to help plan the remainder of the robot’s travels. It shows the Columbia Hills in Gusev Crater. The picture was made by draping an image from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor over a digital elevation model that was derived from two other images from the orbiter. As of sol 135, or May 21, 2004 on Earth, Spirit sat approximately 0.4 miles (680 meters) away from its first target at the western base of the hills, a spot informally called West Spur. The team estimates that Spirit will reach West Spur by sol 146, or June 1, 2004. Spirit will most likely remain there for about a week to study the outcrops and rocks associated with this location.
May 20th, 2004
In Montreal, Steve Squyres describes new adventures of the Mars rovers Cornell Chronicle
The Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are heading into two new and very different adventures in their pursuit of further geological evidence that water once flowed on the planet. Spirit is speeding like a clipper ship toward the now not-so-distant Columbia Hills from its landing site at Gusev crater. Its twin, Opportunity, is surveying the rim along the football stadium-sized Endurance crater on the Meridiani plain for a potentially perilous pathway into the crater to investigate a huge, cantilevered bedrock outcrop.
May 18th, 2004
New Mars rock hints at short-lived lakes New Scientist
The Mars rover Opportunity has discovered hints of a type of rock never before seen on the planet. Its presence would mean that any watery periods in Mars’ past were cold and short-lived. Opportunity has been perched on the rim of a 130-metre wide crater dubbed Endurance since early May. It has been using its remote sensing instruments to study the rocks exposed in the steep sides of the crater.
May 18th, 2004
Rover finds new Mars water signs
The US space agency’s robotic rover Opportunity has found initial evidence that rocks at a new Martian crater it is exploring were deposited in water. The rover has conducted tests on a 30-cm-long rock called Lion Stone, which was probably tossed out by the impact that excavated Endurance Crater.
May 17th, 2004
NASA
In the midst of its extended mission on Mars, NASA’s Spirit rover ran into a software glitch over the weekend and rebooted itself, mission managers said Monday. The anomaly represented the first software reset since Spirit froze up early in its mission. This time, however, the consequences were not nearly as serious.
May 17th, 2004
Temperature Map, “Bonneville Crater”
Rates of change in surface temperatures during a martian day indicate differences in particle size in and near “Bonneville Crater.” Temperature information from the miniature thermal emission spectrometer on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is overlaid onto a view of the site from Spirit’s panoramic camera.
May 17th, 2004
Mars Rover Inspects Stone Ejected From Crater
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has begun sampling rocks blasted out from a stadium-sized impact crater the rover is circling, and the very first one may extend our understanding about the region’s wet past. Opportunity is spending a few weeks examining the crater, informally named “Endurance,” from the rim, providing information NASA will use for a decision about whether to send the rover down inside. That decision will take into account both the scientific allure of rock layers in the crater and the operational safety of the rover. Opportunity has completed observations from the first of three planned viewpoints located about one-third of the way around the rim from each other.
May 14th, 2004
Rover starts crater science tasks
The US space agency’s Mars rover Opportunity has begun investigating rocks along the rim of the large crater it is perched by on the Red Planet.
The rover has conducted scientific tests on Lion Stone, a 30cm-long rock by the edge of Endurance Crater. Scientists must now decide whether to risk sending the rover into the crater. There is a real possibility, they say, that it might not be able to get out.