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Opportunity Rover Flexes its Muscles

Posted on: Monday, 2 February 2004, 06:00 CST

By ANDREW BRIDGES

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- NASA's Opportunity rover sent back its first 360-degree panoramic image of the surface of Mars on Monday, and extended a robotic arm that will touch the planet's surface.

The Mission team unveiled a photograph showing a wide expanse of red soil and mountain ranges. "It provides us with a real sense of you are there," said Jeff Johnson, of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Opportunity's robotic arm includes several instruments that can be used to study materials found on the planet's surface. Engineer Joe Melko said photographs showed that all the pieces of the arm are in place.

"The arm is working well," he said.

Opportunity already spied a mineral called gray hematite in the soil at its landing site. Preliminary evidence suggests the iron-rich mineral is of a variety that forms in liquid water, providing the first evidence that the site was wetter and maybe hospitable to life long ago.

Meanwhile, Opportunity's twin, the Spirit rover, was a week away from rolling on Mars again because of a software problem. Engineers deleted more files from Spirit's so-called "flash memory" but delayed reformatting it completely over the weekend, giving them more time to diagnose the rover's problems, mission manager Mark Adler said.

Engineers believe at least one and maybe both of the 384-pound robots may last at least twice as long as their planned 90-day lifetimes. A 15-watt heater that's been turning on unnecessarily on Opportunity may curtail its extended mission, however.

Once under way, the two six-wheeled rovers could cover thousands of yards apiece, rolling from target to target like no other mission to Mars ever has.

NASA scientists said the two solar-powered spacecraft have ample time to roam far and wide across the very different locations into which NASA plopped them.

"With the duration these missions are going to have, with the scientific riches at each site, the best is still ahead of us," said Cornell University astronomer Steve Squyres, the mission's main scientist, in a recent interview.

About the Mars Exploration Rover Mission

NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, launched toward Mars on June 10 and July 7, 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. Spirit landed on January 3, and Opportunity is scheduled to land on January 24, 2004.

The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet.

Primary among the mission's scientific goals is to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars. The spacecraft are targeted to sites on opposite sides of Mars that appear to have been affected by liquid water in the past.

The landing sites are at Gusev Crater, a possible former lake in a giant impact crater, and Meridiani Planum, where mineral deposits (hematite) suggest Mars had a wet past.

After the airbag-protected landing craft settle onto the surface and open, the rovers will roll out to take panoramic images.

These will give scientists the information they need to select promising geological targets that will tell part of the story of water in Mars' past. Then, the rovers will drive to those locations to perform on-site scientific investigations over the course of their 90-day mission.

These are the primary science instruments to be carried by the rovers:

-- Panoramic Camera (Pancam): for determining the mineralogy, texture, and structure of the local terrain.

-- Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES): for identifying promising rocks and soils for closer examination and for determining the processes that formed Martian rocks. The instrument will also look skyward to provide temperature profiles of the Martian atmosphere.

This image shows Opportunity's arm in its extended position. The rover, now sitting 1 meter (3 feet) away from the lander, can be seen in the foreground.

3-D image of Opportunity stretching its arm. Credit: NASA/JPL

Illustration of the rovers' Pancam. Credit: NASA/JPL

-- Mössbauer Spectrometer (MB): for close-up investigations of the mineralogy of iron-bearing rocks and soils.

-- Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS): for close-up analysis of the abundances of elements that make up rocks and soils.

-- Magnets: for collecting magnetic dust particles. The Mössbauer Spectrometer and the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer will analyze the particles collected and help determine the ratio of magnetic particles to non-magnetic particles. They will also analyze the composition of magnetic minerals in airborne dust and rocks that have been ground by the Rock Abrasion Tool.

-- Microscopic Imager (MI): for obtaining close-up, high-resolution images of rocks and soils.

-- Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT): for removing dusty and weathered rock surfaces and exposing fresh material for examination by instruments onboard.

A goal for the rover is to drive up to 40 meters (about 44 yards) in a single day, for a total of up to one 1 kilometer (about three-quarters of a mile).

Moving from place to place, the rovers will perform on-site geological investigations. Each rover is sort of the mechanical equivalent of a geologist walking the surface of Mars. The mast-mounted cameras are mounted 1.5 meters(5 feet) high and will provide 360-degree, stereoscopic, humanlike views of the terrain.

The robotic arm will be capable of movement in much the same way as a human arm with an elbow and wrist, and will place instruments directly up against rock and soil targets of interest.

In the mechanical "fist" of the arm is a microscopic camera that will serve the same purpose as a geologist's handheld magnifying lens. The Rock Abrasion Tool serves the purpose of a geologist's rock hammer to expose the insides of rocks.

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