Roving Mars Page #4

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iExpected retro-rocket ignition/i

ion my mark. Mark./i

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iAt this point in time/i

iwe should be on the ground./i

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iAny signal that we receive from now/i

iindicates the vehicle would be alive,/i

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ion the ground and bouncing./i

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iThe spacecraft has to survive all/i

ithe bounces for landing to be a success./i

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iNo signal at the moment./i

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i( man) Stand by./i

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iSignal strength is currently intermittent./i

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i- We don't see a signal at the moment./i

i- Right./i

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iWe saw an intermittent signal/i

ithat indicated we were bouncing./i

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iHowever, we currently do not/i

ihave signal from the spacecraft./i

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iPlease stand by./i

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This time, we're approximately

ten minutes after landing,

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The vehicle should have

rolled to a stop by now,

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The deep-space stations in Goldstone

and Canberra are searching for the signal,

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i(woman)/i We see it!

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i-( man)/i What do we see?

i-( man #2)/i We've got the signal!

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i( Squyres)/i The first thing to do

is open our solar panels to the sun

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so we'll have some power,

This charges up the batteries,

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After that, we can deploy the camera mast

so the rover can see,

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and deploy the antenna

so the rover can talk to us,

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i(cheers and applause)/i

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i( man)/i Our first pictures from Mars!

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- What is that?

- That's looking down on our vehicle,

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i(woman)/i Oh!

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We could not have imagined

returns as early as this,

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as clear as this,

as successful as this,

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and in the volume that it has been,

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Ladies and gentlemen, Mars,

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i( Squyres)/i We sent ''Spirit''

to Gusev Crater,

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a crater in

the southern highlands of Mars,

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lt's 1 00 miles in diameter,

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What makes it special is that emptying

into it is a giant water-carved channel,

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Gusev is a hole in the ground

with a dry river flowing into it,

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There has to have been a lake

in this crater once upon a time,

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We sent ''Spirit'' there to seek out

sediments, to look for sedimentary rocks

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that were laid down long ago in that lake,

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Once we landed,

the scariest part of the mission

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was the initial unfolding of the rover,

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There are so many gears and springs

and motors and hinges and latches

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that have to work just right,

or you're done,

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Once everything's deployed,

we're ready to start looking around,

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We can look off into the distance with

our cameras and our infrared spectrometer,

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and we can learn a lot from a distance

of i5/i0 yards, 1 00 yards,

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about what the rocks look like

and what they're made of,

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Then, if we see a rock

that has a texture or a composition

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that looks interesting to us, we can drive

over to it and check it out in detail,

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For driving, the rover has

these kind of googly-eyed cameras

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that it uses to take images

of the terrain in front of it,

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They've got wide-angle lenses,

and they provide sort of a fisheye view,

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''Spirit'' uses these pictures to make

its own decisions about how to drive,

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lt'll drive forward, look at a rock and say,

''That's too big, l have to go around that,''

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Or maybe it'll see smooth sailing

and just move on,

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We can actually program different levels

of courage or cowardice into the rover,

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telling it how aggressive to be, depending

on how dangerous we think the terrain is,

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These rovers are so complicated that it

takes hours to get a set of commands right,

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so when we operate them, we'll normally

send commands to them just once a day,

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The first rock that we looked at

was this one,

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We named it Adirondack,

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When a rock sits

on the surface of a planet,

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it can undergo

what's called ''weathering,''

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When it's exposed to

sunlight or humidity or wind,

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the surface of the rock can be modified,

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and the evidence of how it formed

can be destroyed,

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So, to get to the clues you need,

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you have to get inside the rock,

below the weathered surface,

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The key to understanding Adirondack

was the Rock Abrasion Tool,

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The RAT gives us the ability

to grind into a rock,

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exposing the unaltered evidence inside,

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So we put a RAT hole into Adirondack

and then we hit it with everything we had,

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We looked at it with our cameras,

our spectrometers, and our microscope,

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Adirondack is a piece of lava,

lt's not a sedimentary rock,

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And every other rock around it

is a piece of lava, too,

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This was a huge disappointment,

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We came to Gusev Crater

looking for sediments

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that were laid down long ago

in a lake,

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