NASA's Mars
rover Opportunity will back its
way out of a crater it has spent four months exploring after reaching terrain that appears
too treacherous to tread.
Sitting at an
incline inside "Endurance Crater" in Meridiani
Planum, Opportunity has apparently reached in impasse. To the rover's right, slopes are
too steep to pass, while on the left the terrain appears to contain
sandy patches where Opportunity could bog down.
A move
in either direction could prove mission-ending for a
rover that has performed well-beyond its nominal six-month mission.
With other science targets still remaining outside of
"Endurance," flight controllers have decided to leave the
crater after looking - but not touching - an area dubbed "Burns Cliffs," a 33-foot (10-meter) high scarp
that has tantalized researchers since Opportunity first entered the
crater on June 8.
"We
wanted to get a little closer than we are but this is what we can get safely,"
said Joy Crisp, project scientist for the rover mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), in a telephone interview. "Really what we want to see is the
structure and textures of the layers in the cliff."
The rover is still
50 feet (15 meters) from the a region at the base of the cliff where two
layers of rock meet at different angles. Opportunity will use its
mast-mounted panoramic camera and miniature thermal emission spectrometer
(Mini-TES) - both remote sensing instruments - to collect information
researchers hope will show whether the Burns Cliff's layers were formed by water
or deposited by wind.
"But after we're done here,
it'll be time to turn around," said Steve Squyres, principal investigator for
the rover mission at Cornell University, in a statement. "Going any farther
could cut off our line of retreat from the crater, and that's not something
anybody on the team wants to do."
Other attractive sites await Opportunity outside the
stadium-sized "Endurance Crater." They include the heat shield that protected
the rover when it slammed into the Martian atmosphere during landing and
"Victoria Crater," a depression six times larger than Endurance sitting three
miles (5 kilometers) south of Opportunity's current position.
Troubleshooting
Spirit
Rover engineers have also completed troubleshooting efforts
with Opportunity's robotic twin Spirit, which is currently exploring the
Columbia Hills on the other side of Mars.
The rover has been intermittently sending out
signals indicating the brakes on two of its wheels were functioning properly.
But after a series of tests and analysis, engineers have determined that the
rover sensor charged with checking Spirit's brake release is most likely sending
out a false indication. In the future, rover drivers will disregard the alert
and presume Spirit's brakes are releasing as expected.
Some Mars researchers hope the rover may even summit one of
the Columbia Hills.
"I would like to get to the top and get to look down," said
Jim Erickson, rover project manager at JPL, in a telephone interview. "I don't
know what we're going to see."
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