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New Mars rover working well ; Scientists thrilled with first photos

Posted on: Monday, 26 January 2004, 06:00 CST

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Opportunity rover zipped its first pictures of Mars to Earth on Sunday, delighting and puzzling scientists just hours after the spacecraft bounced to a landing.

The pictures show a surface smooth and dark red in some places, and strewn with fragmented slabs of light bedrock in others. Bounce marks left by the rover's air bags when it landed were clearly visible.

"I am flabbergasted. I am astonished. I am blown away. Opportunity has touched down in an alien and bizarre landscape," said Steven Squyres of Cornell University, the mission's main scientist. "I still don't know what we're looking at."

NASA began receiving the first of dozens of black-and-white and color images from Opportunity about four hours after its flawless landing. Mars at the time was 124 million miles from Earth.

Mission members hooted and hollered as the images splashed on a screen in mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

"The pictures just blow me away. We've certainly not been to this place before," deputy project manager Richard Cook said.

Opportunity plunged into the martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph and bounced down on the surface just six minutes later, swaddled in protective air bags. It hit with a force estimated to be just two to three times that of Earth's gravity. Engineers had designed it to withstand as much as 40 G's, said Chris Jones, director of flight projects at JPL.

The six-wheeled rover landed at 12:05 a.m. EST in Meridiani Planum, believed to be the smoothest, flattest spot on Mars. Opportunity lies 6,600 miles and halfway around the planet from where its twin, Spirit, landed Jan. 3.

On Sunday, NASA said Opportunity was in excellent health and that Spirit was on the mend after a serious software problem had hobbled it.

Initial analysis of the images suggested that Opportunity landed in a shallow crater about 66 feet across. Its low rim shouldn't block the rolling robot once it gets going, Squyres said.

"We have scored a 300 million-mile interplanetary hole in one," said Squyres, whose enthusiasm for Martian geology is not just overwhelming but infectious. "We are actually inside a small impact crater."

Opportunity could roll off its lander in 10 to 14 days, mission manager Arthur Amador said. Opportunity's possible targets include a larger crater, maybe 500 feet across, that lies an estimated half- mile from where the spacecraft landed.

The rover's ramp off its lander appeared unobstructed, unlike that of the Spirit rover, said Matt Wallace, another of the mission managers. Spirit had to use an alternate ramp because a deflated air bag blocked its safest route to the martian surface.

Together, the twin 384-pound rovers make up a $820 million mission to seek geologic evidence that Mars was once a wetter world, possibly capable of sustaining life. NASA launched Spirit on June 10 and Opportunity on July 7. Each carries nine cameras and six scientific instruments.

On Wednesday, Spirit developed serious problems, cutting off what had been a steady flow of pictures and scientific data. It resumed sending data Friday, but on a limited basis.

Engineers now believe the problem arose with software that manages the file system in the rover's flash memory, project manager Pete Theisinger said. Other possible culprits include broken hardware or solar radiation.

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