Scientists Await Data From Spirit Rover

Scientists awaited data from the Spirit Rover after it started probing the mineral composition of a large martian rock dubbed Adirondack.

The six-wheeled robot broke out its “Swiss army knife” of gadgets this week to examine some of the Red Planet’s soil and on Tuesday turned its attention to the rock, NASA scientists said.

Mission members had not decided whether to use a tool to drill past the surface of the sharply angled rock to get measurements from its core. The data could help reveal how the rock, located in Mars’ Gusev Crater, was formed and offer clues to Mars’ geologic past.

“Mars is not going to give up her secrets easily but the key is, we have the tools to unlock it,” the mission’s principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, told reporters.

Earlier in the week, the rover used its entire tool kit for the first time to complete an analysis of the martian soil to determine its mineral composition.

Scientists said the results of the probe – which included the first-ever analysis by a Mossbauer spectrometer outside Earth – raised as many questions as answers.

“We have now a number of hypotheses about what’s going on in the martian soil,” Squyres said. “We don’t know that this soil came from the Gusev Crater. The stuff could have come from somewhere else. It’s going to be very interesting to dig some holes and see if it looks the same” deeper down.

The German-made Mossbauer spectrometer, a small metal box attached to the rover’s robotic arm, told scientists of a mix of minerals in the soil, including olivine and iron.

Squyres said scientists were surprised to find olivine, a mineral usually associated with volcanic eruptions. Mission members now believe the soil could be a layer of finely ground lava, he said.

“That would be a surprise to me,” he said. “I think we’re going to learn wonderful things by using the (rover) wheels to scrape and push” the soil away to see what’s underneath.

Another tool noted iron, argon, sulfur, chlorine, nickel and zinc in the soil, said Dr. Johannes Brueckner of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.

Most of the minerals have been noted by previous Mars expeditions, including those of Pathfinder and Viking, but this marks the first time scientists have detected nickel and zinc, he said.

Scientists think the sulfur and chlorine – the building blocks of salt – might be a clue to what is holding the soil in minuscule clumps a few tenths of a millimeter in diameter. The clumps didn’t break up under pressure from the spectrometer’s contact plate, as scientists expected, indicating a fairly strong bond, Squyres said.

Spirit was doing remarkably well Tuesday transmitting an “incredible amount of data,” said Jennifer Trosper, mission manager from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

“It’s like we got an Internet upgrade overnight,” Trosper said.

Meanwhile, Spirit’s twin, Opportunity, remains on track to land Saturday on Mars. NASA is targeting Opportunity to land in Meridiani Planum, which lies halfway around the planet from Spirit’s Jan. 3 landing site in Gusev Crater.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration dispatched the two robots to prospect for geologic evidence that Mars once was a warmer, wetter world capable of supporting life.

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On the Net:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html

http://mars.esa.int/