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BRINGING MARS DOWN TO EARTH; Rover Uncovers a World of Knowledge

Posted on: Sunday, 9 January 2005, 18:00 CST

The Spirit and Opportunity rovers - still chugging across the face of Mars - a year after they landed and nine months beyond their expected lifespan - have utterly changed human understanding of the Red Planet, scientists say.

"What we've gotten out of them in the first year has wildly exceeded our hopes and dreams," said Harvard biology professor Andrew Knoll, a NASA team member whose study of Martian rocks helped prove that a vast sea once covered the ground where Opportunity now rolls.

Opportunity, with Martian winds on the Meridiani Planum apparently clearing dust off its solar panels, remains at near full battery strength. Though Spirit in the Gusev Crater is weaker, both might continue to work for months or longer in the harsh Martian environment.

"They just keep on ticking," Knoll said. After initially operating day-by-day, NASA scientists now expect a gradual mechanical breakdown.

"It's a tribute to the engineers. These things were just designed and built beautifully," Knoll said.

Spirit recently completed a 3-mile trek from its landing zone to the so-called Columbia Hills, looked out at the view and is now exploring the area, full of rocks from Mars' earliest period, 4.5 billion years ago. Opportunity has gone a little more than a mile, climbed down a steep crater and back out, and is now aiming for new terrain a mile away.

"None of us would have predicted the kinds of things they've told us about Mars," Knoll said. "This is the first time in human history we've been able to examine in detail and close up the sedimentary history of another planet."

The rovers' probes of rocks and sediments have shown that the history of Mars - initially volcanic and wet - appears to have gone dry and cold as much as 3 billion to 4 billion years ago while Earth remained dynamic. If life was able to develop there, he suggests, it was probably only briefly and if it remains, it is probably deep in crevices.

NASA watcher Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said the rovers have given NASA a much-needed boost after the Columbia shuttle disaster and the failure of other Mars probes. And he said their success could dramatically change the scope of the next Mars rover mission, Mars Science Laboratory in 2009. The Bush administration has proposed a return to the Moon, with manned missions to Mars as the ultimate goal.

"It's certainly great news for the Mars program," McDowell said. "The ability to have some robustly designed rovers that can survive for a long time is essential if you're going to have long-term exploration."

Caption: ON A ROLL: Harvard prof Andrew Knoll reports stunning discoveries by NASA's two Mars rovers. AP file photo, left, NASA photo, above.

Source: Boston Herald

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