| |
|
 |
| |
 |
|
|
| |
There are many great
features available to you once you register at TrekUnited,
including:
- Richer content, access to many features that are
disabled for guests like commenting on our news
articles.
- Create your own blog, or personal gallery.
- Access to a great community, where you can interect
with like minded individuals.
- Access to our chat room, and guest chats.
- Access to our network of sites, including Galactica.com.
- Access to our submit news feature, members can
try their hand at online journalism.
- It's simple, it's easy and it's free
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
Opportunity prepares for crater descent |
|
|
|
Written by Derek Kessler on
Sunday, 09 September 2007
|
|
|
|
 The Opportunity Mars rover is once again preparing to descend into a half-mile-wide (800-meter-wide) crater, after spending weeks waiting out waves of dust storms, NASA said Friday. Opportunity is scheduled to start rolling into Victoria Crater as early as Tuesday, the space agency said in a mission advisory. Meanwhile, the rover's twin on the other side of the planet, Spirit, climbed onto a plateau of layered bedrock nicknamed Home Plate this week to renew scientific observations.
In July, Martian dust storms blocked so much sunlight that researchers feared the solar-powered robots would run completely out of power and freeze to death. NASA put the rovers into a low-energy survival mode, and the skies have been clearing gradually since early August — clearing the way in turn for higher levels of activity.
NASA said beneficial wind gusts removed some of the dust that built up on Opportunity's solar arrays. "These rovers are tough," Alan Stern, NASA's associate administrator for science, said in the advisory. "They faced dusty winds, power starvation and other challenges — and survived. Now they are back to doing groundbreaking field work on Mars. These spacecraft are amazing."
The rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will spend the next few days determining whether the dust damaged Opportunity's microscopic imager. If that tool is working, the team will used the imager to check whether a scanning mirror for the rover's miniature thermal emission spectrometer can function accurately.
"If the dust cover or mirror is no longer moving properly, we may have lost the ability to use that instrument on Opportunity," said Steve Squyres of Cornell University in New York, who is principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments. "It would be the first permanent loss of an instrument on either rover. But we'll see."
The rovers, which were built with a "warranty life" of 90 days, have survived for three and a half years. In that time, they have sent back unprecedented data about Martian geology, including the best evidence yet that the Red Planet was once wet enough to sustain life.
Squyres has said the descent into Victoria Crater could well be Opportunity's last stand. The crater contains an exposed layer of bright rocks that may preserve evidence of interaction between the Martian atmosphere and surface from millions of years ago. The layer is about 40 feet (12 meters) from the rim of the crater, where Opportunity is now being positioning for the downward drive.
"We chose a point that gives us a straight path down, instead of driving cross-slope from our current location," said Paolo Bellutta, a rover driver planning the route. "The rock surface on which Opportunity will be driving will provide good traction and control of its path into the crater." Victoria is the biggest crater Opportunity has encountered during its mission.
Discuss: TrekUnited Forum
|
|
|
|
|
"Less talk! More synthehol!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
