• news
  • THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 7 2006 2:41 PM

Martian Rover Opportunity Ready to Examine Victoria Crater

Submitted by WilWheaton

Edited by WilWheaton

Tags: NASA, Mars, space

After two years driving around the Martian surface, the rover Opportunity is set to examine its intended destination, the Victoria Crater.

[E]xamination of the rocks exposed in the walls of Victoria crater will greatly increase the understanding of past conditions on Mars and the role of water.

"In particular, we are very interested in whether the rocks continue to show evidence for having been formed in shallow lakes," [NASA Smarty pants guy Ray] Arvidson stated.

Scientists and ground controllers are "ready to hit Victoria with everything we've got," added Byron Jones, a rover mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Though Opportunity and its twin Spirit have scoured the Martian surface and returned useful data and jokes about evil robot twins for years, this particular mission-within-a-mission is very exciting for JPL scientists, who weren't even sure if Opportunity would be able to make the drive up to Victoria Crater.

Opportunity has been traversing an annulus of dark material around Victoria, said William Farrand, a research scientist here at the Space Science Institute. He is also a member of the Mars Exploration Rover science team.

"There had been some fears that this might be loose, tough to drive on soils, but it has turned out to be fairly well compacted and a good driving surface. We are planning on taking one more look at outcrop material before driving to the rim of Victoria crater," Farrand told SPACE.com.

In the works is a strategy to study Victoria.

High on the priority list, Farrand said, is finding a good vantage point for taking what should be a stunning color panorama of the crater. In the robot's drive around the rim of Victoria, a decision is forthcoming about wheeling Opportunity in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, from an orbital perspective, he added.

"I think everyone on the team is pretty psyched to get to the rim of the crater and to get a rover's eye view of what's inside," Farrand said.

JPL scientists also noted that Spirit and Opportunity are very old -- approximately 174* in Martian Rover Years -- and are beginning to show signs of aging.

For instance, a joint in Opportunity's robot arm stalled last week as it was trying to start measurements on a trench it dug.

"We can't say how long the rovers will last," [John Callas, JPL rover project manager] said, "but we will push to get the best possible science out of these national treasures as long as they keep operating. Victoria could very well be the most productive and exciting science of the entire mission."

Meanwhile, at Spirit's exploration site within Gusev Crater, the rover recently experienced a software reset. Cause of the problem was thought to be an overworked central processing unit.

Pushed for more details by a tough reporter, Callas also admitted that Spirit has been driving with its left blinker on for days at a time, while Opportunity mistook the gas for the break, and plowed through a Martian Farmer's Market two weeks ago.

*This number was entirely made up by me, but the fact remains that they're old. Really old. And it's actually really, really cool that they're still able to do more than fill their Depends with coredumps of bad memory at this advanced age.

  • PERMALINK
  • PRINT
  • Digg This
  • Email To A Friend
 
Comments
SockPuppet

SockPuppet

I'm lost
July 2006

SEP 07, 2006 02:49 PM

I hope they find fossils smile

steve626

steve626

Tarentum, PA
February 2005

SEP 07, 2006 02:55 PM

Well, good try. They've lasted about 10 times longer than they were originally supposed to. They were supposed to last 90 sols (martian days, 24hours, 45 minutes) but are both over 900!

J24U

J24U

Danvers, MA
February 2006

SEP 07, 2006 03:01 PM

It's really cool to see something right happening for the NASA/JPL people.

Cassiel

Cassiel

Aurora, CO
September 2004

SEP 07, 2006 03:47 PM

the title of this article is vaguely dirrrty

Chainlink

Chainlink

Key West, FL
August 2005

SEP 07, 2006 03:59 PM

Cassiel said:
the title of this article is vaguely dirrrty



Victorias crater is HUUUGE !

emotedcreations

emotedcreations

Germany
July 2006

SEP 07, 2006 04:10 PM

What does SOL stand for? Anyone know?
Nevermind.... Read the posts...

xxxxxxx

xxxxxxx

Canada
September 2005

SEP 07, 2006 05:00 PM

Cassiel said:
the title of this article is vaguely dirrrty



"We are planning on taking one more look at outcrop material before driving to the rim of Victoria crater."

Seriously, though. The rovers have been a spectacular success that only underscore how pitifully small-minded and scandalously wasteful the current re-allocation of NASA's "science" funds to human space flight is. We are entering an age when robots can do real, scientifically and culturally (via web and multimedia presentations) meaningful exploration, and everything is being abandoned.

I'm sure not many people here are aware of the number of missions to explore the solar system and universe that have been cancelled to fund Bush's childish fantasies. These are missions that often cost peanuts compared to the money being dumped into the technology required to keep humans alive in space, and in some cases are half completed, not just in terms of research and design, but even literally built. Missions to find Earth-like planets in other solar systems, to explore other parts of our own, such as Jupiter's moon Europa, which is thought to have more LIQUID water on it than Earth does, to image the earliest age of the universe, before light began to shine, using long-wavelength gravitational waves, and so on. And this is to say nothing of Earth, solar, and climate science.

These are not programs that can simply pick up again where they left off when a future president cancels the moon/Mars programs. The accumulated momentum of the programs, the training and the people, will take at least a generation if not more to recover (assuming it ever does). This underpublicized retreat from the project of trying at the national level to advance our understand the world we live will surely rank as one of the most terrible long-term legacies of this terrible leader.

Daopoet7

Daopoet7

Bel Air, MD
October 2005

SEP 07, 2006 06:00 PM

As an aside, I wonder what impact Pluto's new classification as a dwarf planet will have on any planned missions to study it and Charon. Having buried the Europa in the Nasa budget, despite the huge possibilties of discoveries for the moon, Pluto may get shafted to put even more funding into future "moonbase" attempts.

On topic, the Mars rovers are triumphs of engineering to simply have lasted as long as they did. And I hope for fossils too, though potential findings will most certainly, if they exist, happen with a manned mission, due to the sheer landscape to be covered.

NickFaust

NickFaust

USA
April 2004

SEP 07, 2006 06:46 PM

I think it's so cool that these little folks have lived so long and continue to scurry about the planet.

xxxxxxx

xxxxxxx

Canada
September 2005

SEP 07, 2006 08:54 PM

Daopoet said:
As an aside, I wonder what impact Pluto's new classification as a dwarf planet will have on any planned missions to study it and Charon.



The New Horizons mission was just far enough along that it escaped the ax. It launched last Jan. It will arrive at Pluto-Charon in 2015 and explore the Kuiper Belt in the years after that.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Daopoet7

Daopoet7

Bel Air, MD
October 2005

SEP 08, 2006 12:08 PM

xxxxxxx said:

Daopoet said:
As an aside, I wonder what impact Pluto's new classification as a dwarf planet will have on any planned missions to study it and Charon.



The New Horizons mission was just far enough along that it escaped the ax. It launched last Jan. It will arrive at Pluto-Charon in 2015 and explore the Kuiper Belt in the years after that.

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html



Wow, I missed that. Thanks!

ZPO

ZPO

Roy, WA
July 2004

SEP 09, 2006 12:20 PM

In addition to the blinker - it screams "You damn maritans! Get off my lawn!" while parked.

FellOnEarth

FellOnEarth

Temecula, CA
April 2006

SEP 09, 2006 11:57 PM

SOL: Shit Out of... Fuck I forgot the rest. Oh wait, Some Other Lifeform?

By the way, great title.

featured interviews