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Home Plate Brings Mars Exploration To Every Desktop

As Spirit explores the Home Plate outcrop NASA and Cornell scientists are imaging the area in high detail. The PanCam image sections coming down each day are stunning images that will make for one of the best color panoramas of the mission to date. An early twin panel 1024 desktop is available here. Image stitchers are welcome to alert us as to when their draft and finished versions are available for public release. Be the first to stitch up Home Plate. Contact us here.
by Staff Writers
Pasadena CA (SPX) Feb 14, 2006
The Mars Rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory continues to pore over close-up images sent back by Spirit from a tabletop-like geologic feature called Home Plate in Gusev Crater.

Spirit got its first view of Home Plate last August, after cresting Husband Hill, part of the Columbia Hills, which were named for the lost crew of the space shuttle. It took the rover 94 Martian days, or sols, to drive the 848 meters (2,782 feet, a little more than half a mile) to the formation. In all, the golf cart-sized rover has driven about four miles across the surface at Gusev.

Spirit is now studying a rock target called Barnhill, located near Home Plate, using instruments on the rover's robotic arm.

The rocks and geologic characteristics of Home Plate are like no other found by either Mars rover in the 25 months they have been rolling over the red planet. Steve Squyres, the mission's principal investigator, took time out from his hectic schedule to answer a few quick questions about the rock formation and about the overall status of the rovers:

Space Daily:
The Home Plate rocks look like a volcano had rained down debris in the middle of water-sculpted strata.

Steve Squyres:
Well, that's an interesting interpretation, but we're a long way from having an answer yet.

SD:
Does anybody on the team have any idea how such markedly different rocks could lie in such close proximity?

SS:
There are a bunch of possibilities: Impact deposits, volcanic deposits, maybe wind- or water-lain sediments. In the images we have so far, the rocks look to some of us like they might be explosive volcanic deposits, but that's purely conjecture at this point - a working hypothesis. Everything is on the table until we've gotten more data down.

SD:
The rovers seem to be impervious to the Martian environment. Are they giving any signs of breaking down, or might they still be working when the Mars Science Laboratory lands in a few years?

SS:
They are not showing signs of breaking down. They are showing definite signs of age, but all the signs of age so far are ones that we can work around. So they're still very capable vehicles.

Of course, that could change at any time. We are 'waaay' past warranty on these vehicles, and there is no telling when they will die. It could be two years or now, or it could be tomorrow. So we treat each day as a gift.

As for the MSL, it's going to land in 2010 if all goes well, more than four years from now. If either MER rover is still alive when that happens, I will be very surprised.

  • Editor's note. This story was released in an earlier version without being illustrated fully.

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    Roving The Red Planet
    Pasadena CA (JPL) Feb 15, 2006
    NASA's Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, have been working overtime to help scientists better understand ancient environmental conditions on the red planet. The rovers are also generating excitement about the exploration of Mars outlined in NASA's Vision for Space Exploration.







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