Historical Clues on Mars
“The combination of instruments on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is such a great advantage,” said Dr. Jack Mustard of Brown University, Providence, R.I. He is deputy principal investigator for the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, a mineral-identifying instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
With programs such as Google Mars Lab and Google Sky, the average non-Space individual can sit at the kitchen table and sip coffee while observing a planet we are thinking of moving onto. How interesting can it get?
With instruments and satellites that are flying over Earth, some of NASA’s most recent Mars spacecraft demonstrate details of ice-rich deposits that are located near the Martian poles. The radar and imaging results of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, along with the imagery of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity revealing highly detailed imagery and radar to see actual layers of crater-wall cliffs. Meanwhile the twin of the rover Opportunity, Spirit, is using brand new orbital images showing what is going on with Mars and the rover’s surroundings, looking for an interpretation regarding water-altered Martian rocks which contain minerals, trying to find out where it will fit into its location on the layered structure of the planet.
Previously, prior to the dust storm according to the NASA report, Dr. John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., project manager for the rovers, said, “The biggest news about the health of the rovers is that it is essentially unchanged from nine months ago. Each rover has operated more than 1,000 Martian days on the surface of Mars. They are well past their original design life of 90 Martian days, and there is always the possibility that a critical component on either rover could stop functioning at any time, so we operate the rovers with that in mind and value each additional day they continue to work.”
Presently the two rovers are ready to go back to work, with days of work ahead of them now that the Mars dust storm is over, almost taking both of them down with the count. The rover engineer team has decided on possible routes for the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity to enter Victoria Crater, about one-half mile in diameter. They have decided on a site that is farther to the right side of the rim, nea the ripple of bright soil that is usually on the images just outside the crater, near the top center of the scene.
NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington, has the California Institute of Technology (JPL), manage its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Exploration Rover missions, with Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, as the prime contractor for the orbiter.
This entry was posted on Monday, September 3rd, 2007 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Mission History, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
