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Mars Downloaders Swamp NASA Web Site

Posted on: Saturday, 10 January 2004, 06:00 CST

By ANICK JESDANUN

Associated Press -- Think of the Library of Congress's entire print collections - and then some - to get an idea of how much data space enthusiasts have downloaded from NASA's Web sites this week.

Visitors had obtained more than 34.6 terabytes of images, video and other information as of Friday afternoon, the bulk related to the Mars rover Spirit. By some estimates, all the words in every book in the Library of Congress total 20 terabytes.

So far, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has posted all raw images from Spirit, some within a half-hour of the data reaching Earth. At least 10 to 30 images are expected daily, with some even available in 3-D.

NASA also created panoramic views by piecing several images together and plans interactive features in which viewers control the view with a mouse (sorry, but you won't be able to control the spacecraft's camera directly).

Once the rover begins moving, NASA plans video summaries at least weekly by combining still images. For now, video is largely limited to animation of the spacecraft's journey, documentary-style clips and streaming of the NASA TV cable channel.

The European Space Agency had planned similar offerings from Beagle 2, the British-built probe that has not been heard from since it left the Mars Express mother ship in mid-December. Europeans still plan to offer images from the mother ship within a month.

The NASA sites have received 1.7 billion hits, or requests for information, since the morning of Spirit's landing Saturday. That averages to 260 million hits daily, eclipsing traffic for the 1997 Mars Pathfinder mission, the Hubble Space Telescope and recent visits to Jupiter and comet Wild 2.

"Mars has always occupied kind of its own special place in people's imagination," said Brian Dunbar, NASA's Internet services manager.

Traffic peaked Monday, when the sites got more than 400 million hits. By comparison, Pathfinder got 47 million on the busiest day, and the shuttle Columbia disaster on Feb. 1 produced 75 million hits.

More than 13 million unique computers have visited the sites at some point since Saturday, NASA estimates.

To handle the Mars traffic, NASA is paying $1.5 million to eTouch Systems Corp., Speedera Networks Inc. and Sprint Corp. beyond the $3.5 million it pays them a year to handle NASA's more popular Web sites, said Jeanne Holm, NASA's Web portal manager.

As part of the deal, Speedera is reproducing NASA's Web sites on thousands of computers in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, China, India, Australia and more than a dozen other countries. Visitors automatically get the fastest available connection.

"We wanted to make sure people in different parts of the world wouldn't get an inconsistent experience," said Ajit Gupta, founder and chief executive of Speedera, which also handles Web content distribution for anti-virus companies and Fox's "American Idol."

During Pathfinder, NASA persuaded Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW), Cornell University and nearly two dozen other institutions to donate Internet capacity and host mirrors of the sites.

"It was a different Internet world then, when dot-coms were doing well and everybody was happy to pitch in," Holm said.

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.

Spirit team member Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu processes photos beamed back from Mars. Credit: AP

3-D photo of Mars as seen from the Spirit rover. Credit: NASA

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.

-- 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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On the Net:

Mars Exploration Rover Mission

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