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| The first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack. As it had been instructed a week earlier, the Moessbauer spectrometer, an instrument for identifying the minerals in rocks and soils, is still placed against the rock. NASA/JPL |
The instructions to extend the arm had been sent a week earlier, and the picture shows one of the rover's scientific instruments, the mineral-identifying Mössbauer spectrometer, still in place against the rock.
Engineers are sending commands today for the rover to begin making new scientific observations for the first time in a week, starting with panoramic camera images of nearby rocks. The images are calibrated and color-corrected in the MarsLab at Cornell University. The commands also will tell the rover to return stored scientific data.
From halfway around Mars, at Meridiani Planum, the twin rover Opportunity is sending backcolor panoramasthat are giving scientists and engineers ideas about which specific rocks within an outcropping near the rover will make the best targets for examination.
Cornell's Jim Bell, lead scientist for the panoramic cameras, or Pancams, on Opportunity and Spirit, says that details of an outcropping of rocks near Opportunity can be seen in a new color-picture mosaic. It is the first portion of a full-circle panorama of the rover's landing site that has been taken and partially transmitted.
Other new images from the rover show how Opportunity's airbags left detailed impressions in the fine-textured soil as the spacecraft was rolling to a stop in the small crater where it now sits. "These marks are telling us about the physical properties of the material," Bell says.
The soil at Opportunity's landing site appears to have different properties from the soil in Gusev crater, says Bell, who is associate professor of astronomy at Cornell.
Opportunity has extended its rear wheel backwards to a driving position as part of preparations to roll off its lander and onto Martian soil, possibly as early as Saturday night. The rover already has lowered its front wheels, and next it will be commanded to lower its middle wheels and release its robotic arm from the latch that has held it in the stowed position. After the roll off, soil close to the lander will be the rover's likely first target for close-up examination with a microscopic imager and two tools for detecting the composition rocks and soil.
| Below, the "footprints" left by Opportunity's airbags during landing. The circular region of the flower-like feature (center) is about the size of a basketball. Scientists are studying the prints for more clues about the makeup of martian soil. On the right, a picture of the actual airbags shows the same pattern. NASA/JPL/Cornell |
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