The Mars Spirit Rover Takes a Long Drive
By ANGELA WATERCUTTER
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Spirit rover fell short of its goal but still made its longest journey since landing on the martian surface.
Engineers had hoped the rover would travel 164 feet Monday on its way to a crater known as “Bonneville,” mission manager Jim Erickson said. But Spirit only managed to move about 88 feet because it spent more time than initially planned studying rocks and soil along the way, he said.
“Spirit, she’s put some more territory behind her,” Erickson said Monday. “We’re closer but not as close as we’d wanted to be.”
Spirit’s longest previous distance covered in a day was 70 feet. That occurred last week.
Before setting off for the crater, Spirit investigated a flaky rock dubbed “Mimi.” Scientists want to know why the rock is flaky when nearby rocks are not.
Erickson said flakiness may indicate layering – a possible sign the rock was formed over time instead of all at once, as may be the case with a rock spit from a volcano.
Scientists revised their estimate of the distance to the “Bonneville” crater, saying it’s about 1,150 feet from Spirit’s landing place. The robot still has about 800 feet to go to reach the crater.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Mars, Opportunity was digging a trench in an area called “Hematite Slope” because it is rich in the iron-bearing mineral that typically forms in water.
“What we’re trying to do is figure if the surface that we see is the same all the way down,” Erickson said.
NASA scientists hoped Opportunity would finish the trench on Monday so they could see if layering had occurred.
NASA scientists said Monday that they hope Mars rover Opportunity wouldfinish digging a trench on the Red Planet today, so they could have an early look at what is below the surface of the soil.
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory here said the rover is digging a trench with alternating forward and backward spinning of its right front wheel. Inspections of the resulting hole are planned for Tuesday and the morning of Wednesday.
Opportunity spent much of Sunday making a thorough “before” examination of the spot selected for digging a ditch.
In preparation for digging, the rover examined the trenching site with its microscopic imager, its Moessbauer spectrometer and, overnight, its alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.
The rover completed upward-looking observations before, during and after Mars Global Surveyor flew overhead looking down.
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