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2 Ill. Scientists Monitor NASA Missions

Posted on: Friday, 2 January 2004, 06:00 CST

CHICAGO (AP) - Scientists from the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute are closely monitoring two NASA missions this week, hoping to gather valuable information when one spacecraft flies by a comet and another is scheduled to land on a Martian crater.

Instruments developed at the university are aboard both missions, and the U of C expects they will provide clues to help answer such questions as whether there was ever water on the Red Planet.

"I'm very excited and anticipating we'll find new information about Mars," said Thanasis Economou, one of two scientists from the university who will be tracking the missions from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Economou will be watching readings on the chemical compositions of rocks and soil found on Mars by Spirit, one of the two rovers that are to land on Mars' Gusev Crater. Spirit is expected to land late Saturday while Opportunity is scheduled to follow on Jan. 24.

His colleague, Anthony Tuzzolino, will be monitoring and watching readings on the amount of dust found near a comet that the Stardust spacecraft, launched in 1999, will be flying within 190 miles of on Friday. He has been involved with 35 space missions.

Both scientists' expectations are tempered by experience and awareness of the missions' odds.

Economou said only about a third of missions to Mars have succeeded. He plans to stay at the lab in southern California for several months to study what the particle X-ray spectrometers from the rovers turn up.

"It won't reveal all the secrets of the universe," Tuzzolino said of the half-hour comet fly-by. "It will just add a small bit of information to the vast amount of information we've had since science was born."

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