[meteorite-list] Opportunity Rolling Again After Fifth Mars Winter

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 10 May 2012 09:19:54 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201205101619.q4AGJsOk027866_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-131

Opportunity Rolling Again After Fifth Mars Winter
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
May 09, 2012

PASADENA, Calif. -- With its daily supply of solar energy increasing,
NASA's durable Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has driven off the
sunward-tilted outcrop, called Greeley Haven, where it worked during its
fifth Martian winter.

Opportunity's first drive since Dec. 26, 2011, took the rover about 12
feet (3.67 meters) northwest and downhill on Tuesday, May 8. The rover
operations team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.,
received confirmation of the completed drive late Tuesday, relayed from
NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter.

"We're off the Greeley Haven outcrop onto the sand just below it," said
rover driver Ashley Stroupe of JPL. "It feels good to be on the move
again."

While at Greeley Haven for the past 19 weeks, Opportunity used the
spectrometers and microscopic imager on its robotic arm to inspect more
than a dozen targets within reach on the outcrop. Radio Doppler signals
from the stationary rover during the winter months served an
investigation of the interior of Mars by providing precise information
about the planet's rotation.

Opportunity will look back with its panoramic camera to acquire
multi-filter imaging of the surface targets it studied on Greeley Haven.

The rover team will also check that the power supply still looks
sufficient with the rover at a reduced tilt. Opportunity kept a
northward tilt of about 15 degrees in recent months at its winter haven.
In Mars' southern hemisphere, that tilt kept its solar panels favorably
angled toward the winter sun low in the northern sky. The winter
solstice for southern Mars was at the end of March. The northward tilt
after Tuesday's drive is about 8 degrees.

Opportunity has been exploring the Meridiani region of Mars since
landing in January 2004. It arrived at the Cape York section of the rim
of Endeavour Crater in August 2011, and has been studying rock and soil
targets on Cape York since then.

"Our next goal is a few meters farther north on Cape York, at a
bright-looking patch of what may be dust," said Opportunity science-team
member Matt Golombek of JPL. "We haven't been able to see much dust in
Meridiani. This could be a chance to learn more about it." Beyond the
dust patch, the team intends to use Opportunity to study veins in
bedrock around the northern edge of Cape York. A vein inspected before
winter contained gypsum deposited long ago by mineral-laden water
flowing through a crack in the rock.

Endeavour Crater offers Opportunity a setting for plenty of productive
work. The crater is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter -- more than 20
times wider than Victoria Crater, which Opportunity examined for two
years. One type of deposit detected from orbit at some locations on
Endeavour's rim contains ancient clay minerals, interpreted as evidence
of ancient, wet conditions with less acidity than the ancient, wet
environments recorded at sites Opportunity visited during its first
seven years on Mars.

Unless wind removes some dust from Opportunity's solar array, allowing
more sunlight to reach the solar cells, the rover will need to work
during the next few weeks at locations with no southward slope. "We'll
head south as soon as power levels are adequate to handle the slopes
where we'll go," said Mars Exploration Rover Deputy Project Scientist
Diana Blaney of JPL. "There are some deposits on Cape York where, based
on their geologic setting, we think there's a good chance of finding
ancient clays."

A later destination for Opportunity lies farther south, on a rim segment
named Cape Tribulation, where ancient clays have been detected from orbit.

Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month
prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of
bonus, extended missions. Both have made important discoveries about wet
environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting
microbial life. Spirit stopped communicating in 2010.

NASA launched its next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, on Nov. 26 for
arrival at Mars' Gale Crater in August 2012.

Landing successfully is quite a challenge, and Curiosity's mission is
pioneering a new landing method to enable use of a heavier rover.
Curiosity is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as
any previous Mars rover. Its size and mass accommodate a science payload
designed to study whether the landing region has had environmental
conditions favorable for supporting microbial life, including chemical
ingredients for life.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute
of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project
for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. More information
about the rovers is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov. You
can follow the project on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and
on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers .

Guy Webster 818-354-6278
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Guy.Webster at jpl.nasa.gov

2012-131
Received on Thu 10 May 2012 12:19:54 PM PDT