NASA's Opportunity Mars
Exploration Rover is wheeling about a field of spacecraft litter -- the remains
of heat shield hardware that protected the robot from its plunge through the
martian atmosphere last January.
Bits and pieces of flotsam
scattered across Meridiani Planum -- including a spring and other junked components
-- can be clearly seen in new rover images
The heat shield was shed
during Opportunity's descent and landing sequence, falling several miles to
the surface.
Space engineers are eager
to study the clutter for clues as to how well the heat shield survived its fiery
entry. Scientists hope to glean useful data about Mars' soil, given the entry
shield's high-speed impact.
Free-falling
The Mars Exploration Rover
(MER) survey of spent entry equipment includes looking for any surface disturbance
produced when the hardware slammed into the terrain.
An entry shield-created
crater might give an idea of the mechanical properties of the soil on Mars,
said Benton Clark, Chief Scientist of Space Exploration Systems at Lockheed
Martin Space Systems in Denver, Colorado.
Clark, a MER science team
member, said that such a crater could help identify and "calibrate" other small
craters that the rover comes across.
The heat shield hit hard
after it was intentionally dropped off while the Opportunity rover and other
landing gear were still on a parachute.
"One of the reasons
the scientists are interested in inspecting the area is that they are hoping
that when the heat shield hit the ground, after free-falling, it would create
a small, fresh crater that we could inspect," Clark told SPACE.com.
On images relayed from Opportunity,
there appears to be the impact or a bounce location to the far right of the
heat shield, Clark noted.
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