Even
on Mars, size counts.
NASA's
Opportunity rover at Meridiani
Planum has wheeled up to "Erebus Crater" - a sizable
feature about 984 feet (300 meters) across.
The
decision has been made by scientists and engineers operating the robot to go west,
counterclockwise around the crater. Erebus is nearly twice the diameter of
Endurance Crater, an earlier "pit stop" of Opportunity
that produced a bonanza of science data.
"We're
there, for all intents and purposes," said Steve Squyres
of Cornell University
in Ithaca, New York. Squyres
is principal investigator for the Opportunity
and Spirit Mars rover science instruments.
"We
can see most of the crater from where we are right now, and we've made the
decision that we're going to traverse around it on its western side," Squyres told SPACE.com. "We're actually going to
start the drive around the crater by going north a little bit...to get onto
terrain that's mostly bedrock...before we swing west."
Squyres said that as Opportunity
makes its way counterclockwise around the crater, the science team and rover
drivers are keeping their eyes sharp, looking for a safe place to possibly
enter Erebus Crater.
"The
goal being to get to a place we've named the 'Mogollon
Rim'...on the western side. If we can find a safe place to go in, that's great...
if we can't, we'll just continue on to the south," Squyres
added.
Nasty-looking places
On
the other side of Mars--within Gusev Crater--the Spirit
robot has been intently surveying the summit of Husband Hill.
Session
work has included studying "Cliffhanger"--a windblown drift. Stereo imaging of "Tennessee Valley" from the summit is also on the
action item list.
Increased
attention is being paid on how best to get down from the summit, Squyres noted in an update on the Cornell University-based
Mars Exploration Rover website. Which way to go and what route should be picked
are under discussion, he reported.
"The
hill is very steep in places....and the orbital images show a lot of tasty
geology, some of it in pretty nasty-looking places. All in all, the next
several weeks are going to present us with some of the most interesting
route-finding decisions that we've faced in a long time, on both sides of the
planet," Squyres noted.
Meteor search campaign
Spirit
has also turned nighttime sky-watcher. The Mars machinery is engaged in
"shooting sessions"--not only imaging the two moons of the red planet, Phobos and Deimos, but will also
be on the lookout for shooting stars.
"We're
almost done with our Phobos and Deimos
astrometric and color imaging," said Jim Bell, an
Associate Professor in the Cornell University Astronomy Department. Bell is lead scientist for the Panoramic Camera color
imaging system carried by both Spirit and Opportunity.
"We
have a few more sequences to run...and we'll also be trying to image Phobos going into and out of the Mars shadow in a 'lunar'
eclipse later in October for additional orbit timing data," Bell explained.
"Next
we are going to start our meteor search campaign in earnest," Bell told SPACE.com. "We have to
finish up our nighttime observation campaigns relatively soon. That's because
we're at the peak of our power availability now on Spirit over the coming
months, as the Sun starts to get lower and Mars gets farther from the Sun."
Bell said rover
engineers for Spirit may not be able to muster enough power to operate the
cameras at night. "So the clock is ticking," he added.
Back
on the other side of Mars, nighttime observations of the martian sky by Opportunity for a longer period of
time may be possible, Bell
said, because that rover is closer to the equator. However, Opportunity
is also dealing with a power-draining heater unit. It is stuck in the on
position. Too early to tell if that situation may deter the robot's nighttime
sky scanning, he said.
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