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A Farewell Glance At Endurance As Opportunity Heads

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity climbed out of "Endurance Crater" during the rover's 315th sol (Dec. 12, 2004), and used its front hazard-avoidance camera to look back across the crater from the rim. The rover spent just over six months inside the stadium-sized crater, examining in detail the tallest stack of bedrock layers ever seen up close on a foreign planet.

Pasadena (JPL) Dec 13, 2004
Scientists have identified a water-signature mineral called goethite in bedrock that the NASA's Mars rover Spirit examined in the "Columbia Hills," one of the mission's surest indicators yet for a wet history on Spirit's side of Mars.

"Goethite, like the jarosite that Opportunity found on the other side of Mars, is strong evidence for water activity," said Dr. Goestar Klingelhoefer of the University of Mainz, Germany, lead scientist for the iron-mineral analyzer on each rover, the Moessbauer spectrometer.

Goethite forms only in the presence of water, whether in liquid, ice or gaseous form. Hematite, a mineral that had previously been identified in Columbia Hills bedrock, usually, but not always, forms in the presence of water.

The rovers' main purpose is to look for geological evidence of whether their landing regions were ever wet and possibly hospitable to life. The successful results so far - with extended missions still underway - advance a NASA goal of continuing Mars exploration by robots and, eventually, by humans, said Doug McCuistion, Mars Exploration Program Director at NASA Headquarters.

Klingelhoefer presented the new results from a rock in the "West Spur" of Mars' "Husband Hill" at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this week.

Spirit has now driven past the West Spur to ascend Husband Hill itself. One remaining question is whether water was only underground or ever pooled above the surface, as it did at Opportunity's site.

"As we climb Husband Hill and characterize the rock record, we'll be looking for additional evidence that the materials were modified by ground water and searching for textural, mineralogical and chemical evidence that the rocks were formed in or modified by surface water," said Dr. Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, deputy principal investigator for the rover instruments.

The amount of worrisome friction in Spirit's right front wheel has been decreasing. Meanwhile, rover wranglers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., continue to minimize use of that wheel by often letting it drag while the other five wheels drive.


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Mars Life: Trouble Without The Rubble?
Moffet Field CA (SPX) Dec 13, 2004
On January 25, Opportunity landed on Mars. The landing site, Meridiani Planum, was the flattest location scouted in the history of Mars exploration.







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