January 24, 2004

WITH the rover “Spirit” safely landed on Mars and sending in the first view cards, scientists are anxiously waiting more information. They want to know, for instance, what the surrounding terrain is actually like? How does the landscape look further on? And what interesting and intriguing elements are there in the soil.?

Sixty-eight hours after Spirit landing, planetary geologist with the SETI Institute and Nasa’s Aimes Research Centre, Dr Nathalie Cabrol, looked at the planet’s landscape and exclaimed, “Beautiful. It’s simple beautiful.” She has been working on a landing site on Mars for the past ten years with her husband Dr Edmond Grin. Dr Cabrol is mainly responsible for selecting the Gusev crater as the landing site for the rover. The efforts of the science team paid off with the more-than-hoped-for successful landing of the rover.

“These first few days are baby steps in our giant leap toward understanding the environment on Mars. The rover landing went perfectly. We had only one tense moment after the 4th bounce when we lost contact, but we regained contact after a few minutes and all was well.
 

Biggest challenges

Actually, Spirit landed 32 times as it bounced across Gusev before coming to rest in the vast plain encompassment by the crater. It was a fantastic achievement! The engineers are doing the checkout now. For them, its business as usual and all seems to be going well,” she stated.

After the initial jubilation of the historic landing, scientists and engineers were waiting with bated breath as the airbags responsible for the rover’s landing had to be retraced in order for it to go any further. Matt Wallace, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s mission manager for rover operations was cautious when he said, “Our focus here is making sure we do the right thing. We want to be brave . . . but not stupid.”

The rover is equipped with a mini-thermal emission spectrometer (Mini-TES). Images from this will help scientists choose their roving targets. But all this could be done once the bags were successfully retraced and did not hinder the rover’s roaming abilities. Pyrotechnic devices had to be used to cut free the rover from its landing cables. Though the cable-cutting exercise had been perfected before the actual mission, there was a degree of tension as the cables were actually cut.
 

‘Sleepy Hollow’

“We wouldn’t be able to do any science with any instruments on our rover arm. We can take panoramic pictures and work the Mini-Tes ‘til the cows come home’, but the scenery is never going to change. So we’re looking forward to getting that cable cut. And that’s just what we intend to do,” said Matt Wallace, mission manager for Spirit in his interview to SPACE.com.

“Sleepy Hollow” is a circular, roughly three metre across depression in the ground. Steve Squyres, Principal Investigator for Spirit from Cornell University, says, “It’s a hole in the ground . . . a window into the interior of Mars. It’s a very, very exiting feature for us.”

He feels that the feature could be an impact crater with exposed rock at the rim’s edge. It may be a secondary crater made by falling fragments from a larger object which initially struck somewhere else on the surface. There are other interesting features too on the Martian surface.

It will be a ‘day trip’ for Spirit to visit Sleepy Hollow as soon as the rover starts roving. “But we haven’t earned our Martian driving licence yet. If it takes a week, that’s okay by me,” said Squyres.

It will be a “day trip” for Spirit to visit “Sleepy Hollow’ as soon as the rover starts roving. “But we haven’t earned our Martian driving licence yet. If it takes a week, That’s okay by me,” he said.

There are two brief stopovers for the rover on the way to Sleepy Hollow. Two fair-sized rocks will need inspection while the rover is on its way to the eerily named destination. But Sleepy Hollow, like its legendary counterpart, could be a dangerous place for the rover. Though not a place with dancing fairies that make one lose the sense of time or dimension or a place of evil creatures, like the story goes on Earth, it might have a lot of dust which could get the rover’s wheels stuck in it.

Though Sleepy Hollow appears to be old, there seems to be something new about its history. It seems that the surface material on the feature has been somewhat disturbed. This could have happened when the airbags of the rover bounced on and off the surface before it came to a stop. If that is really the case, then a good look at the disturbed material might give the team a clue as to how much of loose or solid material is in the depression.
 

‘Men in Red’

Beside the cheering and jubilation of the entire Spirit team and Nasa, the successful landing and initial pictures of the Red planet also made a great impression in higher places. Apart from it being another, bigger leap for mankind, the United State government was also optimistic regarding future space exploration. In a show of untamed exuberance, President George W. Bush placed a phone call to the Spirit team to congratulate them on its success, claiming their efforts were a “reconfirmation of the American spirit of exploration”. The phone call meant a great deal to the team members who said that it meant that the country was behind them.

An official had already indicated that the president envisioned sending a mission to the Red Planet in another decade. He was of the view that the president wants to send both men and robots to build habitats and transform Mars into a space station for outer and farther missions. He also wants to first build a permanent space station on the Moon. Senior officials also stated that Bush wants to once again put new life into the space program which had somewhat fallen back after the disaster that killed seven astronauts last February.

It would also mean pushing the public into a common unifying goal before his re-election campaign begins. The actual announcement has been received with a lot of scepticism. There are people who feel that The United States needs to tackle its problems on Earth rather than spend on flights of fancy to space.

Rep. Ralph Hall, who is a member of the House Science Committee, was happy about the move. He has tried many times to get the president interested in furthering space goals.

“I had the feeling the last 21/2 years people would rather make a trip to the grocery store than a trip to the Moon because of the economy. As things are turning around, we need to stay in touch with space,” said Hall.

Nasa administrator, Sean O’Keefe, in replying to the question of whether the next step would be putting humans on the Red Planet, said, “the rovers are a precursor mission-kind of an advance team-to figuring out what the conditions are on the planet, and once we figure out how to deal with the human effects, we can then send human to explore in real time”.

O’Keefe, while answering questions regarding interplanetary exploration, on the White House Website, stated, what we learn and whether we can develop the power and . . . propulsion capabilities necessary to get there faster and stay longer and potentially support humans in doing so”.

In all aspects, the Moon could be a good test-bed for equipment meant for Mars. It is just three days away, while Mars is approximately six months away. Observatories, mining camps and habitats can all be made and tested on the Moon first before humans get “in the Red” on the Red Planet. Also mining for Helium-3 which can be converted to fuel for use back on Earth can also be done on the Moon.

According to former US senator John Glenn, the first American asronaut to orbit Earth, “the only sensible reason for going to the Moon first would be to get ready for Mars.”

Now that the rover has all its wheels free to roam and “head for the hills” on Mars, mission planners are once again anxious to see whether it does so successfully and also wait for opportunity to join the lone rover. While mankind’s mechanical emissaries go roving on Mars, planet Earth waits for a solution to its own problems. Back here, Phil Collins would rightly hum, “its just another day for you and me in Paradise.”

While this article went into print, Spirit had went out for a 30-minute “Sunday drive” on the Martian surface (on Jan 18). Its first destination was Adirondack, a pyramid-shaped football-sized rock. The Native American name Adirondack, means “They of the great rocks, seems to be ‘the tip of the iceberg’” as a pat of it is buried underground. After sampling the rock Spirit will move on to its next target rocks, “Sushi” and “Sashimi” in a region named “Wasabi”.

The writer regularly contributes cosmology-related articles