posted 09-08-2004 05:56 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by spaceuk:
There will be no images or data for around 11 days in a few days time since the Sun will be in the way.

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posted 09-10-2004 08:13 AM            

A passive experiment is to see if any soil disturbance takes place during this period.

posted 09-22-2004 11:21 AM            

NASA's extended contract for another 6 months too provided both keep working - which both have done admirably so far even now way way past design lifetime.

posted 09-27-2004 07:15 PM               

Now if we just had something like this in orbit around the moon, we could finally put an end to that Moon landing hoax.

posted 12-03-2004 04:24 AM            

Eleven reports by 122 authors in Friday's [3/12/04] issue of the journal Science present results from Opportunity's three- month prime mission, fleshing out headline discoveries revealed earlier.

Opportunity bounced to an airbag-cushioned landing on Jan. 24. It is exploring a region called Meridiani Planum, halfway around Mars from where its twin, Spirit, landed three weeks earlier. Sedimentary rocks Opportunity examined, "clearly preserve a record of environmental conditions different from any on Mars today," report 50 rover-team scientists led by Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. and Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.

"Liquid water was once intermittently present at the Martian surface at Meridiani, and at times it saturated the subsurface. Because liquid water is a key prerequisite for life, we infer conditions at Meridiani may have been habitable for some period of time in Martian history," according to Squyres, Arvidson and other co-authors.

posted 12-03-2004 06:35 AM            

Some of this information we have been seeing in the data already published but it is nice to see the 'formal' presentation.

• The geologic record at Meridiani Planum suggests that conditions were suitable for biological activity for a period of time in martian history.

• The thickness of the soil on the plain is estimated to be about a meter. The flatness and thin cover suggest that the plain may represent the original sedimentary surface.

• The soils consist of fine-grained basaltic sand and a surface lag of hematite-rich spherules, spherule fragments, and other granules.

• Wind ripples are common.

• Underlying the thin soil layer, and exposed within small impact craters and troughs, are flat-lying sedimentary rocks. These rocks are finely laminated, are rich in sulfur, and contain abundant sulfate salts. Small-scale cross-lamination in some locations provides evidence for deposition in flowing liquid water.

• We interpret the rocks to be a mixture of chemical and siliciclastic sediments formed by episodic inundation by shallow surface water, followed by evaporation, exposure, and desiccation.

• Hematite-rich spherules are embedded in the rock and eroding from them. We interpret these spherules to be concretions formed by postdepositional diagenesis, again involving liquid water.

• The uppermost millimeter of some soils is weakly cemented, whereas other soils show little evidence of cohesion. Rock outcrops are laminated on a millimeter scale; image mosaics of cross-stratification suggest that some sediments were deposited by flowing water. Vugs in some outcrop faces are probably molds formed by dissolution of relatively soluble minerals during diagenesis.

• Hematite is concentrated in spherules eroded from the strata. Ongoing saltation exhumes the spherules and their fragments, concentrating them at the surface

• The dust's cross section weighted mean radius was 1.47 - 0.21 micrometers (mm) at Gusev and 1.52 - 0.18 mm at Meridiani.

• Upward-looking Mini-TES observations show warm and cool parcels of air moving through the Mini-TES field of view on a time scale of 30 seconds.

• Solar cell output decreased because of the deposition of airborne dust on the panels.

• Chemical compositions differentiate between basaltic rocks, evaporite-rich rocks, basaltic soils, and hematite-rich soils.
  
  
• Rocky outcrops are rich in sulfur and variably enriched in bromine relative to chlorine.
  
  
• The interaction with water in the past is indicated by the chemical features in rocks and soils at this site.

• Coarse crystalline hematite and olivine-rich basaltic sands were observed . Outcrops of aqueous origin are composed of 15 to 35% by volume magnesium and calcium sulfates and hematite; only minor jarosite is identified in Mini-TES spectra.
  
  
• Basaltic materials have more plagioclase than pyroxene, contain olivine.
  
  
• Bounce rock is dominated by clinopyroxene and is close in inferred mineral composition to the basaltic martian meteorites.

posted 12-05-2004 06:18 AM            

Every time I view them I want to trace them back as far as I can. Better still I would love to walk beside them!

You might only have "three wheels on your wagon" (actually just a few more!) but
"Keep on truckin' Spirit!"

There's one armchair planetary geologist here who almost 'hangs' on every image.

posted 12-05-2004 02:09 PM               

Are you referring to this photo?

Or maybe a different one? I went to the Spirit 296 and 297 raw image sites but you may have been looking at a photo elsewhere.

Please post a link to the tracks image you saw when you get a chance.

posted 12-05-2004 02:15 PM               

But it is color and so detailed that you can even see the fuzziness of the edges of Gusev Crater caused by the Martian atmosphere!

posted 12-07-2004 06:45 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Scott:
Are you referring to this photo?

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I didn't post links since there are several images showing - so I just posted the sol days to look at under the raw images site.

Those others mentioned by yourself and Philip are also great ones.

I think it IS because of the horizon views and the hilly terrain that make these interesting.

posted 12-08-2004 07:44 AM            

They are still taking images of the walls of crater Endurance and doing science stops.

A quickie 'escape route' that was spotted as it backs out of the crater was abandoned - due to the slope.

It's probably more the web masters loading up the images to site and possible tracking station schedules that delay images appearing sometimes?

posted 12-08-2004 07:49 AM            

Pasadena CA (JPL) Dec 07, 2004

Opportunity has completed its super-high-resolution imaging and other remote sensing operations from the base of "Burns Cliff," collecting more than 985 megabits of telemetry. Due to the large number of observations, the data management team has been working hard to manage available memory. Opportunity has now begun its journey out of "Endurance Crater."

While in the crater, Opportunity has experienced drive slippage of up to 100 percent and tilts as high as 31.05 degrees.

The rover was pushed to its traverse limits, but continued to perform all that was asked of it. Opportunity remains in excellent health. Solar power is nearly as high now as it was at the beginning of the mission.

posted 12-14-2004 06:38 AM            

Some early images from 'on top' show the best images so far of the back shell which I understand they're going head for.

Some other Opportunity images released show tthe spectacular clouds over Endurance and frost forming on the 'sundial' device.

Excellent stuff!

posted 12-16-2004 03:16 PM               

The conclusive discovery by a pair of wheeled robots that Mars once had vast pools of water and possibly could have harbored life was chosen by the editors of the journal Science as the most important scientific achievement of 2004.