MARS MISSION
January 9, 2004

NASA scientists are analyzing the images transmitted from the Spirit rover on Mars and trying to determine where on the Martian surface they would like it to explore. Jeffrey Brown discusses the mission with Cornell University astronomy professor Jim Bell.

 

Online NewsHour Special Reports: Mars Exploration Rovers Jan. 5, 2004: The NASA rover Spirit landed on Mars Saturday and sent Earth its first up-close images of the red planet since 1997. Aug. 27, 2003: Mars had its closest encounter with Earth in 60,000 years. May 29, 2003: Jeffrey Kaye of KCET Los Angeles reports on the latest Mars lander program. June 22, 2000: New evidence suggests there may be water below the surface of Mars. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of science.   News for Students: Lesson Plan: Planets in Proportion     NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission Web site	JEFFREY BROWN: Six days after a near perfect landing, the rover known as Spirit sits 100 million miles from Earth, parked in a large Martian crater, called Gusev, that may be an ancient lake bed. All week rover has sent back spectacular photos of its surroundings as scientists analyze the terrain and decide when and where the rover will make its first move. Joining me now is Jim Bell, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and the lead camera scientist for the mission. Jim Bell, welcome. Tell us first why Spirit is still sitting where it is, and what's going on while it sits?
	Next step in the rover's mission
	JIM BELL: Well, the process of getting the rover Spirit off the lander is a very cautious one. We're in an alien environment, literally. We've landed in a configuration that we couldn't predict ahead of time. And so the first thing we have to do is take a very careful look around and make sure that it's safe to go off the lander, what the engineers call egress off the lander. And so we've been spending quite a few days now looking around, getting the lay of the land, looking at the parts of the lander that the rover might have to drive over or past and so that's a very slow and careful process that the engineers are going through before we're able to drive down onto the Martian surface. JEFFREY BROWN: It was talked today about how the airbags that were there to protect the landing have bunched under the lander and may be causing some problems so that the rover will have to turn before getting down off the lander. Can you explain that? JIM BELL: Yeah, it's possible. Those airbags, which, of course, protected us as we bounced across the Martian landscape, deflated after we landed. But several of them, it looks like they didn't deflate entirely. So they're sort of bunched up, maybe it's still a little bit inflated. And so some of the engineers are worried that if we drive down directly forward, we might scrape those materials or perhaps even get snagged, and that would not be a good thing. This is all about getting onto the surface safely so we can do the science we need to do. But the engineers have practiced a whole variety of different alternative possibilities. That rover can spin all the way around on that lander. We can turn to either side and go off either other side pedal, or even between the pedals if we had to. So there are many different options and they're going to pick the best one, the safest one to get us onto the surface.
	Analyzing the photographs
	JEFFREY BROWN: OK, let's look at some of these amazing photos that have been coming back. The first one is the first color image of the surrounding area. It was sent back to earth on Tuesday. Tell us what we're seeing here. JIM BELL: Well, we're looking at exactly that, the very first picture in color that was sent down. When you take a look at this view, your first reaction might be, "Wow, that's almost like somewhere in the desert southwest of the U.S., in Arizona or California." But when you look more closely, you can see that it really is not an Earthlike environment. For example, the sky is pinkish red in color, because there's a lot of dust in the atmosphere, and the rocks and soil deposits are not like what a geologist would find on the Earth. For example, we were thrilled to see a variety of different kinds of rocks, different rock shapes, ranging from very sharp and angular, certainly scary to the airbag designers, to larger and smoother that we see in the environment. And so there are light rocks, dark rocks, a variety of different forms. We see some materials that look like dunes, some brighter soil deposits, darker soil deposits. Off in the distance, we can see some of these enigmatic circular depressions with bright floors in them. These are a little bit mysterious. We're trying to figure out their origin, especially whether they might have anything to do with the water that may once have been in this large crater we've landed in. JEFFREY BROWN: Let me move to one that was just released today, an infrared terrain photo. Tell us what we're seeing here. JIM BELL: Well, in addition to the spectacular color camera that the rover carries we also have an infrared camera and spectrometer that kind of gives us like a night-vision view ... night goggle vision view of the landing site. When we look in the infrared, we can see the heat energy, the thermal energy emitted by the rocks and soils. And so what we're seeing is an infrared image superimposed on top of the visible light image. We see areas that are red are warmer, areas that are blue are cooler. And the wonderful thing about this image, first of all it tells us that the infrared instrument, called Mini-TES, is working very well; it's very encouraging. But we also see a variety of temperatures, a wide range of temperatures of materials at the landing sight, and the temperature of the material tells us something about its physical properties. For example, the reddish materials are very warm and fine-grained, probably dusty, maybe even fluffy. The bluish materials -- and you can see some of them right in front there; there's a blue rock -- those are cool and coarse-grained, sandy or rocky. So we can use the infrared map and the visible pictures together to try to build a map of the landing site that will guide us to the most interesting bright soil deposits or dark rock deposits. And, of course, those are the things that we want to explore to learn more about this landing site. JEFFREY BROWN: And all of that, the temperature in these photos, help you analyze the possibility of water once on Mars and potentially life? JIM BELL: That's right. One of the main goals of our mission, of our investigation, is to try to search for evidence about whether Mars was Earthlike in the past. And, of course, if it was Earthlike, if it was warmer, if the environment was wetter, if the atmosphere was different, then that raises the possibility of there perhaps having been life on the red planet. JEFFREY BROWN: Now one more photo was also released today, puckishly called "Spirit Rises to the Occasion." And this, I gather, goes to what comes next for the rover?
	Preparing Spirit to roam the crater
	JIM BELL: That's right. You're seeing in this picture a wide-angle view from one of the fisheye cameras in front of the rover. What's happening over ... what's happened over the course of the last week is that the rover is going through this series of unfolding activities, kind of like a Japanese origami puzzle: One part coming out, another part coming out, the mast going up, the solar panels, et cetera. The steps that were taken yesterday were to stand the rover up and unfurl those front wheels. And you're seeing those front ... those two front wheels there sitting down on the deck. That was a very, very important activity. The engineering and science teams were just really happy to see that happen. What it means is that we're one step closer to getting that rover off the lander and onto the surface. Now, what has to happen over the coming week is to continue that standup process, to go all the way to the end. We will cut the last umbilical chord cable that connects us to the lander, and the rover will be a free and independent spacecraft, totally disconnected from the lander. Then we'll be free to either drive down that front ramp or off one of the side ramps or side pedals, depending on what the engineers think is safest. We're looking right now at getting the rover off the lander towards the end of the week, next week. JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Jim Bell, thanks very much for joining us. JIM BELL: Thank you.