SPACE.com -- Rover Opportunity Digs in on Mars

Before-and-after images of Opportunity rover site show robot has utilized its wheels to reveal subsurface materials on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL

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	Rover Opportunity Digs in on Mars By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 10:00 pm ET 16 February 2004

The Opportunity Mars rover used its wheels on Monday to create a trench in martian soil

The Opportunity Mars rover used its wheels on Monday to create a trench in martian soil.

Preliminary looks at images relayed from the rover suggest the trench is some 3-4 inches (8 to 10 centimeters) deep in the martian surface. Using Opportunitys robot arm, tipped with an array of science instruments, an intensive study of the disturbed martian surface is to be carried out.

Scientists want to discern differences, if any, between the observable topside of Mars and materials subsurface. The area picked for the robots first dig has been dubbed Hematite Slope. The area is rich with hematite -- a mineral that typically, but not always, forms in association with water.

Opportunity is operating within a modest crater within the Meridiani Planum region of Mars.

Dig of the day

Rover controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California commanded Opportunity to use its wheels in such a way as to create the trench. The robot then imaged its dig of the day.

Earlier today, Jim Erickson, JPL Mission Manager for the Mars Exploration Rover program told SPACE.com that the dig would use a set of small cleats on the robots right front wheel. "Primarily those cleats are for traction, but they serve as a really thin shovel as well," he said.

Erickson said to accomplish the trench, the rover rocks back and forth, using a selected wheel that can be locked in place and also is spun to do the digging.

Following scientific scrutiny of the trench, the rover is to be driven back to a site called El Capitan, part of a rock outcrop within the crater that the rover is surveying.