 |
|
| Credits |
 |
Mars Rovers Finish Primary Mission and Roll Onward 28 April 2004 
Both
of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers have completed their originally
planned mission and are tackling extra-credit assignments.
"Spirit and Opportunity have completed all the primary objectives of the mission. The terrific success achieved is a tribute to a superb team whose commitment to excellence, and keeping the public engaged, is hard to match," said Orlando Figueroa, director of the Mars Exploration Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington. Opportunity finished its 90th martian day of surface operations on 27 April. That was the last of several criteria set in advance for full mission success. Spirit passed its 90-day mark on April 5. Both rovers have met all goals for numbers of locations examined in detail, distances traveled, and scientific measurements with all instruments. Both rovers are healthy. In early April, NASA approved funding for extending operation of Spirit and Opportunity through September. "This brings Opportunity's primary mission at Meridiani Planum to a resounding and successful close. It's stunning to think through the short history of this vehicle," said Matt Wallace, Opportunity mission manger at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., where rover assembly began barely two years ago. In its three-month primary mission, Opportunity drove 811 meters (more than half a mile) and sent home 15.2 gigabits of data about Mars, including 12,429 images.
Opportunity
found other rock exposures in recent days similar to the ones near its
landing site that yielded evidence for a body of salty water covering
the area long ago. Instead of spending many days to examine those rocks,
controllers told the rover to go to the rim of a 130-meter-wide
(approximately 430-foot-wide) crater informally named
"Endurance."
"We are transitioning into a geologically different region. Nothing could be more striking evidence of this than the view ahead of a landscape that has fewer and smaller rocks than the region explored so far," said Dr. Dave Des Marais, a rover science team member from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. Scientists are using Spirit's observations at ground level to check ideas about the region's geology based on observations from orbiting spacecraft. That could improve interpretation of orbital data for the whole planet. Spirit will systematically survey the soils, rocks and other features on the plain as it continues toward Columbia Hills, with arrival planned for mid to late June. Source: NASA |
|||
| |
||||
|
|
||||
