SPACE.com -- Spirit Rover Drills 'First Planned Hole' in Martian Rock

Here's the daily grind! The Spirit rover has made a round, shallow depression in a rock called Adirondack. By using a Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) history's first grinding of a rock on Mars was done on February 6, 2004. The hole is 2.65 millimeters (0.1 inch) deep, exposing fresh interior material of the rock for close inspection with the rover's microscopic imager and two spectrometers on the robotic arm. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Spirit readies its Rock Abrasion Tool to give rock nicknamed Adirondack the brush off. Credit: NASA/JPL

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	Spirit Rover Drills 'First Planned Hole' in Martian Rock By Leonard David Senior Space Writer posted: 04:00 pm ET 07 February 2004

SPIRIT's "RAT HOLE" ON MARS

The Spirit Mars Exploration Rover has achieved a "hole in one" -- that is, grinding a hole in the rock dubbed Adirondack.

Sitting at its landing site within Gusev Crater yesterday, Spirit's Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) used two tiny diamond cutting heads that spin at high speed to cut into the rock's surface.

The rock had been prepped for the RAT, with the same hardware brushing off a select spot on the rock earlier.

After three hours of whirring, the RAT excavated a hole 1.8 inches (45.5 millimeters) in diameter and roughly 0.1 inch (2.7 millimeters) deep. The RAT exposed fresh interior material of the rock for close inspection with Spirits microscopic imager and two spectrometers on the robotic arm.

Rock resistance

"We put the first planned hole in a rock on Mars," said Stephen Gorevan, Payload Lead for the RAT and head of Honeybee Robotics in New York, maker of the hardware. "It's a really great day for robotics and planetary exploration everywhere."

Gorevan pointed out that the rock was found to be very strong. "It gave us a lot resistanceand that's why we needed at least 3 hours to be able to go this deep."

The RAT did not use a great deal of strength to grind the rock, Gorevan told SPACE.com , using a modest 45 newtons, or 10 pounds of force.

Into the RAT hole

There was much preparation in making the historic grind.

Hours were spent looking at the rock. Great care was taken in deciding the correct joint angles of the arm that holds the RAT.

"We're remembering it here, already, as the assault on Adirondackif you throw in the brushing too," Gorevan added during a telephone briefing today with reporters.

Spirit's robotic arm was repositioned over the rock to lower a Mssbauer spectrometer into the RAT hole, said Matt Wallace, Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Mission Manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The Mssbauer spectrometer is built to determine the composition and abundance of iron-bearing minerals in rock and soil.

Onward to Bonneville

What scientists have learned about Adirondack's geological innards is forthcoming, Wallace said.

The plan now, Wallace stated, has Spirit carrying out more study of Adirondack with the rover's other scientific tools. The robot would then drive about 9 feet (2.8 meters) towards a rock called "White Boat."

From there, Spirit's handlers at JPL are getting ready to begin a step-by-step drive toward a crater that has been tagged as Bonneville.

Scientists are anxious to steer Spirit to the crater, approximately 1,150 feet (350 meters) away -- setting a new distance record for a wheeled vehicle on Mars in the process.