Drive 1 Completed: 2004 January 15d 08h 41m GMT(UT) a distance of 3 metres (10ft). "We made our first use of the arm and took the first microscopic image of the surface of another planet," said Dr. Mark Adler, Spirit mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Drive 2 Completed: 2004 January 18. Turned 40 degrees in short arcs totaling 95 centimeters (3.1 feet). It then turned in place to face Adirondack, the target rock, and drove four short moves straightforward totaling 1.9 meters (6.2 feet). The moves covered a span of 30 minutes, though most of that was sitting still and taking pictures between moves. The total amount of time when Spirit was actually moving was about two minutes. The drive was designed for two purposes, one of which was to get to the rock," Tunstel said. "From the mobility engineers' standpoint, this drive was geared to testing out how we do drives on this new surface." Gathering new information such as how much the wheels slip in the martian soil will give the team confidence for more ambitious drives in future weeks and months.
Malfunction The problem began on January 21 when signals were not received from Spirit. Then on January 23 at 12:34 Universal Time a signal was detected by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain. The transmissions came during a communication window about 90 minutes after Spirit woke up for the morning on Mars. The signal lasted for 10 minutes. Subsequent transmissions from Spirit lasted 20 minutes and 15 minutes. The data indicated that Spirit's flight software is not functioning normally. It appears to have rebooted the rover's computer more than 60 times in the past three days. A motor that moves a mirror for the rover's infrared spectrometer was partway through an operation when the problem arose, so the possibility of a mechanical problem with that hardware was one theory investigated. However, on January 24 it was announced that the problem is related to the rover’s two ‘flash’ memories, which store data even when the rover is powered down. In late January, these memories had stored information gathered before the craft landed. One of the remedies was to purge these files from the flash memory and to re-install a clean version of the flight software. Spirit is now fully opewrational again.
Spirit is a six-wheeled vehicle that carries several instruments to investigate the surface of Mars. It will travel up to 500 meters from the landing site. The data collected from the following instruments will be downlinked via the current Mars orbiters, Global Surveyor and Odyssey.
Pancam (Panoramic Camera) is a high-resolution color stereo pair of CCD cameras that sits on the mast of the rover. It is capable of imaging a 360° field of view. A filter wheel in front of each lens will enable color images.
RAT, the Rock Abrasion Tool is a 0.72 kg drill to make 5-mm deep holes of 45-mm diameter to enable the other instruments to image the cleaned surfaces, and analyze the dust emitted during the drilling.
Microscopic Imager, located on the arm of the rover, is a combination of a microscope and a CCD camera that will focus on mineral grains, both weathered and polished (by the rock abrasion tool) to provide black-and-white pictures for determining the size and shape of the minerals.
Mini-TES (Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer) is 2.1 kg infrared spectrometer that will capture the thermal emissions from rocks, so as to infer the mineral content. It will also look into the atmosphere to monitor the temperature, water vapor, and dust content.
Mossbauer Spectrometer will probe iron-rich (and other) minerals by capturing reflected, Doppler-shifted gamma rays. It is mounted at the end of the rover arm.
APXS, an Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer, is mounted on the arm of the rover and will collect the characteristic alpha particle and x-ray emissions, and enable inference of some of the atomic species in the minerals. The emissions will be by the rarer isotopic components of the well-known atoms in minerals.
Magnet Arrays consist of three sets of magnets. The first set will be with the RAT instrument, to collect the magnetic dust particles from the drilling, for analysis by other instruments. The second set will collect the natural air-born dust for analysis by the Mossbauer and APXS instruments. The third set will just enable the Pancam lenses to remain dust-free.
Project Manager:Peter Theisinger of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Project Scientist: Joy Crisp of JPL.
Principal Investigator: Steve Squyres of Cornell University.
For further details from Jet Propulsion Laboratory or Cornell University.
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