[meteorite-list] Color Picture From Spirit is Most Detailed View of Mars Ever Seen

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:31:59 2004
Message-ID: <200401070339.TAA06405_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Guy Webster (818) 354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Donald Savage (202) 358-1547
NASA Headquarters, Washington

NEWS RELEASE: 2004-010 January 6, 2004

Color Picture From Spirit is Most Detailed View of Mars Ever Seen

The people operating NASA's Spirit have received the first color
pictures from the rover and a congratulatory call from the president.

President George W. Bush called today to congratulate the rover flight
team for reconfirming the American spirit of exploration, said Dr.
Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., where the mission is managed. Later in the day, the
Spirit team awakened the rover with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's
rendition of "Hail to the Chief."

Color images in a mosaic released today are the highest-resolution
pictures ever sent from Mars, more than three times as detailed as
images from Mars Pathfinder in 1997. Spirit's panoramic camera took
12 contiguous frames that the camera team combined into the mosaic.

"This is the day we've been waiting for," said Dr. Jim Bell of Cornell
University, Ithaca, N.Y., leader of the panoramic camera team.

The scene rises from near the edge of Spirit's lander platform to the
sky. Scientists are examining every detail to learn about the landing
area within Gusev Crater. In one section of particular interest,
retraction of the spacecraft's deflated airbags has disturbed the
surface.

"There are places where rocks were dragged through the soil and the
soil was stripped off and folded into bizarre textures," Bell said.
Other areas show tails of debris to one side of rocks, possibly shaped
by martian winds. "There's a wonderful mix of both smooth and angular
rocks near the landing site, and this is something we'll be trying to
puzzle out in the next few weeks," he said.

Scientists and the public may soon have even more to look at. The
panoramic camera mosaic released today shows about one-eighth of a
full-circle panorama of the landing region. The camera team plans to
have the camera finish taking a full panorama this week. The pictures
will share priority with other data during communication sessions
either directly from the rover to Earth or relayed via NASA's Mars
Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey orbiters.

Engineers are conducting test movements of Spirit's high-gain,
direct-to-Earth antenna today to learn more about spikes in the amount
of electricity drawn by one of the antenna's motors when the antenna
was first used Jan. 4, said JPL's Jennifer Trosper, Spirit mission
manager. Meanwhile, the spacecraft will continue using the orbiter
relays and its low-gain, direct-to-Earth antenna.

The flight team is also finding ways to prevent overheating of
electronics inside Spirit. "Our robot geologist was dressed a little
warm for the weather on Mars," Trosper said. The atmosphere and
surface at the landing site this week are not as cold as anticipated.
However, the rover's temperatures are expected to drop when it rolls
off its lander platform and gets its wheels onto the ground.

Roll-off is now planned no sooner than Jan. 12. One of the next steps
in preparing for that event will be to further retract a deflated
airbag protruding from under the lander, said JPL's Jessica Collisson,
flight director. The team tried out the planned retraction steps on a
test rover at JPL. "We're hoping we'll have similar results to what
we had in the test bed and we can get that airbag out of the way,"
Collisson said.

Seeing real panoramic camera pictures from Mars, instead of just from
tests of the camera inside laboratories or spacecraft assembly areas,
put the camera into new perspective for Bell. "Until now, it's been
like having an animal in a cage, but now this beast is out, taking
incredible pictures in the native habitat it was designed to work in,"
he said. He praised "the talented and heroic teamwork of people at
Cornell and around the country who helped develop this camera -- its
optics, filters, electronics."
 
Spirit's twin Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, will reach its
landing site on the opposite side of Mars on Jan. 25 (EST and
Universal Time; Jan. 24 PST). The rovers' task is to explore for clues
in rocks and soil about whether the past environments in their landing
areas were ever watery and suitable to sustain life.
 
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the
Mars Exploration Rover project for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington. Images from Spirit and additional information about the
project are available from JPL at

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov

and from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., at

http://athena.cornell.edu/

-end-
Received on Tue 06 Jan 2004 10:39:48 PM PST