Spirit Stirs As NASA Plots Rover’s Course

NASA’s Spirit rover has rolled for the first time since reaching Mars, backing up 10 inches atop its platform as it began to reposition itself in preparation for exploring the Red Planet’s surface later this week.

“Spirit is a rover,” flight director Chris Lewicki said Tuesday. The six-wheeled robot, which previously stood up from a crouched position, had otherwise been largely immobile since landing Jan. 3.

The rover will first explore a crater and may then try to reach distant hills, a course roughly plotted out after National Aeronautics and Space Administration pinpointed Spirit’s location on Mars. Spirit was expected to roll the 10 feet onto martian soil late Wednesday or early Thursday.

“We know where we are now and we also know where we’re going,” Steven Squyres, the mission’s main scientist, said during a news conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Spirit is expected to follow a meandering path, pausing to sample rocks and soil in its search for evidence of the past presence of water on the dusty surface of Mars. One such target could be “Sleepy Hollow,” a shallow nearby depression that intrigues scientists.

Spirit’s first major destination is an unnamed crater an estimated 825 feet away. The asteroid or meteor that punched out the crater could have exposed ancient rocks that may reveal to Spirit and its half-dozen instruments the evidence that the robot was sent to find, Squyres said.

After that, NASA may dispatch Spirit on a rambling journey toward a cluster of hills to the southeast. But the hills are nearly two miles away, or about five times farther than Spirit is expected to be able to travel.

Before rolling for the first time, the rover cut the last cable attaching it to its lander and began a three-part turn to line it up with the exit ramp it should use to reach the ground, Lewicki said.

Once it reaches the crater, Spirit should be able to examine the blocks of rock that ring the depression. If the rover manages to climb the 18-foot-high lip of the crater, it should be able to catch a glimpse of dunes that scientists believe fill the bowl.

Spirit would then strike out to its southeast, toward a set of tawny hills an estimated 330 feet high.

Scientists believe that the 95-mile-diameter depression in which the rover landed once contained a lake. If so, the hills could preserve evidence of waves that lapped against their slopes, Parker said.

Even if Spirit fails to reach the hills, its camera’s 20/20 vision should be able to pick out from afar the horizontal markings that could suggest the presence of ancient shorelines, Parker added.

Spirit probably will conk out before reaching the hills, however. Martian temperatures of minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit and colder wreak havoc with spacecraft electronics and other components, stressing and, ultimately, breaking them. The last rover NASA sent to Mars, 1997′s Sojourner, lasted nearly 90 days before it succumbed to the cold.

The $820 million Mars Exploration Rover project includes a second, identical rover named Opportunity that is expected to land on the opposite side of the Red Planet on Jan. 24.

—

On the Net:

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