Those
industrious robots on Mars--NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers--remain on duty
as they gather new science data from their respective spots on the red planet.
Opportunity
has just concluded a survey of Beagle Crater, a relatively young feature, said
William Farrand, a research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He is also a member of the Mars Exploration Rover science team.
Farrand
told SPACE.com that Beagle is named after the ship, H.M.S. Beagle, that
naturalist Charles Darwin served on. Over the weekend, Opportunity's
Panoramic Camera was busy collecting a color sweep of Beagle Crater and its
blanket of tossed out material.
"So
that should make for a pretty spectacular data product when all the full frame
scenes are finally downlinked," Farrand said. In addition, Opportunity ground handlers snagged multispectral views of the scene. In addition, by using the robot's Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES), data on the
mineralogy of rocks and soils at Beagle was obtained, he said.
Opportunity
will next be examining a banded ripple and then resume its drive towards Victoria crater, Farrand said. The 115-foot (35-meter) Beagle Crater and the rover are both
about 1,837 feet (560 meters) from the rim of Victoria.
Victoria
Crater is nearly half a mile (800 meters) in diameter. That's nearly six times
wider than Endurance Crater, the feature that Opportunity explored for several
months in 2004 studying rock layers affected by ancient water.
Onward...to Victoria
"Everybody
on the team is pretty excited about the prospect of getting to Victoria crater," Farrand added. When the robot pulls up to that feature, scientists are expecting to see something like 65 feet (20 meters) of stratigraphic section
exposed on the walls within Victoria.
"That
will give us a deeper view into the past history of Meridiani Planum than we
got at Endurance crater or any of the other craters examined to date on the
mission," Farrand explained.
While
the slogging has been slow, Opportunity's arrival at Beagle Crater is good news
to Larry Crumpler, a member of the Mars rover science team. He is also research
curator in volcanology and space sciences at the New Mexico Museum of Natural
History and Science in Albuquerque.
Beagle
appears to be a fairly well-preserved little impact crater, Crumpler said,
"kind of a mini-Endurance."
Crumpler
said that scientists may be having one of the last chances to view the upper
meter of the bedrock before the Mars rover gets into the dark apron material
around Victoria. "Just in case that is a mantling material, this is a good
place to have a good look at rocks."
Spirit's winter haven
Meanwhile,
the Spirit Mars rover at Gusev Crater is undergoing a winter check-up. All of
the robot's cameras are being evaluated. So far, everything appears well with
the Mars machinery as it performs a winter science campaign of observations on
the red planet.
On August 8,
Spirit saw the shortest day, the winter solstice in Mars' southern
hemisphere.
Spirit
has finished acquiring images for the "McMurdo panorama" a full-color,
360-degree view of the rover's winter haven within the Columbia Hills in Gusev
Crater.
That
set of frame-by-frame images from the robot's panoramic camera--as with all scientific data taken during this time period--has required extra time to complete. That's due to the Sun now lower on the horizon, resulting in reduced
solar power levels available to Spirit.
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