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NASA rover set to touch down on Mars' rocky surface

Posted on: Sunday, 4 January 2004, 06:00 CST

NASA rover set to touch down on Mars' rocky surface

Space agency hopefully awaits word of success

By ANDREW BRIDGES Associated Press

Sunday, January 4, 2004

Pasadena, Calif. -- A NASA probe was poised to make a "bull's- eye" landing in a Martian crater Saturday, said project leaders hopeful the spacecraft will safely deliver an unmanned rover and buck a trend of failed missions to the Red Planet.

The spacecraft was expected to reach Mars late Saturday with the Spirit rover, the first of two identical six-wheeled robots that will roam the planet's rocky surface, if all goes as planned.

The gravity of Mars had already begun to tug on the spacecraft earlier Saturday from a distance of 59,000 miles, project manager Pete Theisinger said.

Spirit appeared on track to make a "bull's-eye" landing within a cigar-shaped ellipse inside Gusev Crater, a Connecticut-sized indentation just south of the Martian equator, navigation team chief Louis D'Amario said.

"This is essentially perfect navigation. We couldn't have possibly hoped to do better than this," D'Amario said.

Previously, two in three attempts to land spacecraft on Mars had failed. The latest apparent failure was the British Beagle 2 lander, which has not been heard from since it was to have set down on Mars on Christmas.

"It's an incredibly difficult place to land. Some have called it the 'death planet,' for good reason," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science.

Waiting for word

NASA could hear from Spirit within 10 minutes of landing, but it's more likely that first word that it has arrived would come in the early morning hours today, Theisinger said. Spotty communications could delay confirmation of a safe landing -- and transmission of the rover's first pictures -- for up to 24 hours.

"It could be a long wait," said Steve Squyres, the mission's main scientist.

NASA's last attempt at landing on Mars, in 1999, failed when a software glitch sent the Polar Lander crashing to the ground. Since then, the space agency has increased oversight of its missions.

"We have done everything we know to do to ensure these missions will be a success," said Charles Elachi, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The $820 million NASA project also includes a twin rover, Opportunity, which is set to arrive on Mars on Jan. 24.

The camera- and instrument-laden rovers were designed to spend 90 days analyzing Martian rocks and soil for clues that could reveal whether the Red Planet was ever a warmer, wetter place capable of sustaining life.

Looking into Mars' past

Today, Mars is a dry and cold world. But ancient river channels and other water-carved features spied from orbit suggest that Mars may have had a more hospitable past.

"We see these intriguing hints Mars may have been a different place long ago," Squyres said.

The rovers were built to look for evidence that liquid water -- a necessary ingredient for life -- once persisted on the surface of the planet. A direct search for life on Mars is at least a decade away, NASA scientists said.

Together, the twin robots were launched in the most intensive scientific assault on another planetary body since the Apollo missions to the moon, said Orlando Figueroa, director of NASA's Mars exploration program.

NASA launched the 384-pound Spirit and its twin in hopes they would become the fourth and fifth U.S. spacecraft to survive landing on Mars. Twenty spacecraft from various nations have failed.

Scientists are taking advantage of the closest approach Mars has made to Earth in 60,000 years. NASA intends to send spacecraft to Mars at regular 26-month intervals, or each time the Earth laps the Red Planet as they both circle the sun.

On the Net: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

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