Within the matter of minutes yesterday, scientists from Cornell’s astronomy department decided to move the Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, to a new point of entry on Mars’ Victoria Crater. After surveying possible locations, scientists held a videoconference and decided to return to the original entry location.
Prof. Steven Squyres ’82, astronomy, is the principal scientific investigator of the two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which have now been wandering the Red Planet for 1,304 Martian days, called sols, surpassing the original mission objective of 90 sols. A Martian day is approximately 24 hours, 39 minutes according to NASA’s website.
He has just recently returned from the Svalbard Archipelago in Norway after working with a group of scientists and engineers to test out new technology for future Mars Missions.
“The idea of this expedition was … to try out that suite, that ensemble of instruments under those Mars-like conditions and use that as a step towards learning how to make you do something like that on Mars someday,” Squyres said.
This entry point on the lip of the Victoria Crater is found almost exactly where Opportunity arrived originally. Within the last few months, a large Martian dust storm has imperiled the rovers.
“The sky grew so dark during the daytime that we could barely tell where the sun was,” said Squyres. “It’s still going on, but we’re in now what’s called the decay phase of the storm.”
According to a NASA press release, the team is excited to get Opportunity inside Victoria Crater to examine targets on the inner slope that were identified last summer before dust storms curtailed rover activities.
Robert Sullivan, senior research associate of the project, wants to enter Victoria “as soon as possible” because “the rover is a wasting resource. It won’t last forever.”
But with such a massive dust storm, necessary precautions must be taken.
“We’re a little concerned about dust on some of the optics and so forth. So we want to do some testing and some check-outs before we go in,” Squyres said.
However tough these challenges seem, they are nothing new for those operating the rovers. Spirit has already survived two severe Martian winters and Opportunity once got stuck in a sand dune for six weeks.
In fact, according to Squyers, some of the most important discoveries of the mission have come about due to difficulties, such as a broken wheel on Spirit.
“We drove it through some soil and the soil was white as snow. Bright white stuff that we went and measured the composition of and it was like 91 percent pure silica (SIO2), not quartz but opal. And it was the kind of stuff that you might form, in say, a hot spring,” he said.
When asked about future Mars missions, Squyres left the door open to possibilities.
“We have Spirit and Opportunity on Mars right now, and then there is one [mission] called MSL, Mars Science Laboratory, that’s going to launch in 2009. After that, the program is pretty wide open. It’s not clear what’s going to happen,” he said.
As far as human missions go, Squyres said it was simply a matter of national will.
“I don’t think there are any technological show-stoppers preventing us from sending humans to Mars, but it’s going to be enormously costly, very risky and it’s going to require substantial commitment, resources, and national will to put it on.”
identified last summer before dust storms curtailed rover activities.
Robert Sullivan, senior research associate of the project, wants to enter Victoria “as soon as possible” because “the rover is a wasting resource. It won’t last forever.”
But with such a massive dust storm, necessary precautions must be taken.
“We’re a little concerned about dust on some of the optics and so forth. So we want to do some testing and some check-outs before we go in,” Squyres said.
However tough these challenges seem, they are nothing new for those operating the rovers. Spirit has already survived two severe Martian winters and Opportunity once got stuck in a sand dune for six weeks.
In fact, according to Squyres, some of the most important discoveries of the mission have come about due to difficulties, such as a broken wheel on Spirit.
“We drove it through some soil and the soil was white as snow. Bright white stuff that we went and measured the composition of and it was like 91 percent pure silica (SIO2), not quartz but opal. And it was the kind of stuff that you might form, in say, a hot spring,” he said.
When asked about future Mars missions, Squyres left the door open to possibilities.
“We have Spirit and Opportunity on Mars right now, and then there is one [mission] called MSL, Mars Science Laboratory, that’s going to launch in 2009. After that, the program is pretty wide open. It’s not clear what’s going to happen,” he said.
As far as human missions go, Squyres said it was simply a matter of national will.
“I don’t think there are any technological show-stoppers preventing us from sending humans to Mars, but it’s going to be enormously costly, very risky and it’s going to require substantial commitment, resources, and national will to put it on.”