Mars Opportunity Rover to Explore Patch of Soil
By ANDREW BRIDGES
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Opportunity rover has a big weekend planned, with the vehicle expected to explore a patch of Mars soil that scientists hope will prove rich in the iron-bearing mineral hematite, which typically forms in water.
Scientists want Opportunity to dig four inches or so into the soil, using one of its front wheels to excavate a narrow trench. They hope Opportunity will find minerals that could reveal whether Mars ever was wet enough to support life.
The analysis is a key goal of the mission of Opportunity and its twin rover, Spirit, positioned on the other side of the planet.
Opportunity’s exploration of the soil was originally scheduled for Friday, but was delayed because the rover failed to properly stow its robotic arm, said Guy Webster, a spokesman for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
However, the rover did complete a preliminary survey of a rock outcrop on Friday.
On the other side of Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration planned for Spirit to spend much of the weekend inspecting two rocks, nicknamed “Stone Council” and “Mimi,” and the surrounding soil, then resume rolling toward a crater about 1,100 feet away.
NASA also said Friday it has upgraded the connection to the rovers, bumping up data transmission rates to nearly five times home dial-up speeds.
Engineers on the $820 million mission increased the rover Spirit’s maximum data rate to 256,000 bits per second, using NASA’s 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter as a martian relay satellite.
The rate is twice the highest data rate previously demonstrated, mission manager Matt Wallace said. NASA expects to regularly use the Odyssey link at that rate with both Spirit and Opportunity.
“It significantly improves our bandwidth and data return capability,” Wallace said. A typical dial-up connection to the Internet relies on a 56,600 bit-per-second modem.
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