NASA Expects Mars Color Photo Tuesday
Monday, January 05, 2004
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA (search) proudly showed off a panoramic, 360-degree, black-and-white shot of Mars from its Spirit rover and eagerly awaited the first high-resolution color photo taken of the planet in seven years.
Reporters attending the Monday press conference had to don cardboard 3-D glasses in order to get the full effect of the black-and-white panoramic photo.
"I feel like I'm at a bad, '50s B-movie," mission manager Matt Wallace said as he watched a roomful of reporters take in the image at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (search).
On Monday, NASA released a thumbnail-size color preview of the image — the first color picture from Mars in nearly seven years.
Though the anticipated high-resolution, high-definition color picture of Mars hadn't yet been successfully transmitted, the "postcard" from rover, 105 million miles from home, was expected to arrive sometime Tuesday.
The mosaic color image is said to be extremely sharp and crisp, showing Mars' (search) flat, crater-filled reddish-brown terrain and should be the most detailed photo ever sent by a spacecraft from the surface of Mars.
Steve Squyres, the Jet Propulsion Lab's lead scientist, told reporters that researchers were still waiting for a "communication opportunity" with the rover to get the full, high-resolution color photographs of Mars' surface.
NASA scientists used the high-resolution black-and-white image Monday to pick the first target on Mars they want Spirit to visit: a dusty depression that scientists believe is the rocky bed of an ancient lake that may have once harbored life.
Rover also snapped a few black-and-whites of the sun from Mars. In one shot, the sun was just a tiny ball of light; the other was a close-up.
NASA began receiving its second batch of black-and-white pictures from rover late Sunday.
Art Thompson said the black-and-white pictures that have been streaming from Spirit since its landing are making him and other scientists feel like a kid in a candy store. "We're at the case, deciding what to get," Thompson said.
Cushioned by giant air bags, the golf cart-sized Spirit (search) landed on Mars late Saturday, safely returning the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to the planet's surface for the first time since the 1997 Pathfinder mission.
The $820 million NASA Mars Exploration Rover project also includes a twin golf cart-sized rover, Opportunity. That robot is set to reach the opposite side of Mars from its sibling on Jan. 24.
Just three hours after the unmanned robot landed, it began zipping the first black-and-white images of its surroundings to Earth, 106 million miles distant at the time.
"It was so gorgeous to see the horizon in the pictures. It's what we'd been imagining for so long," said Julie Townsend, a mission avionics engineer.
The first images from Spirit showed a flat plain, deserted save for rocks — none more than a foot high — scattered across the landscape.
The scene enthused scientists, eager to send the rover prospecting among the rocks for evidence that the landing site once was awash in water.
On Monday, tired but punchy scientists said they dubbed Spirit's first target "Sleepy Hollow." They believe the 30-foot-diameter depression is a dust-filled impact crater, one of dozens that pock an otherwise flat landscape.
Over the next three months, Spirit will look for geologic evidence that Mars was once warmer, wetter and perhaps more conducive to life.
Scientists continued to perform health checks on the rover. A science instrument that malfunctioned on the way to Mars was found to be in perfect working order. The instrument, a Mossbauer spectrometer, was designed to analyze iron-bearing minerals in the rocks and soil.
The rover remained in a folded, crouched position atop its lander. On Monday, Spirit was to cut the second of three cables linking it to the four-petaled lander and begin a three-day unfolding process.
But the six-wheeled Spirit will not roll away to begin roaming the Red Planet for another week. Even though it could reach "Sleepy Hollow" in a day's drive, a cautious NASA may break up the trip into several days.
"We haven't earned our martian drivers' licenses yet," Squyres said.
"Sleepy Hollow" lies about 40 feet from where the rover alighted. The 3-D images also show a cluster of hills on the horizon, thought to be less than two miles away. The flatness of the terrain has buoyed the hopes of scientists eager to push beyond the horizon and roam the martian plain.
Scientists determined that two objects believed to be rocks partially obstructing the ramp Spirit will use to roll down to the surface are actually bits of air bag. NASA planned to retract the air bags to clear the way.
There were a few other minor concerns: The current in one of two motors that drive the rover's high-gain antenna was spiking intermittently. And dustier-than-expected conditions meant Spirit's solar panels were generating just 83 percent of the expected amount of power. Neither condition threatened the overall mission, NASA said.
Spirit made an apparently flawless landing in Gusev Crater, a Connecticut-sized basin scientists believe once contained a brimming lake.
Numerous other missions to Mars have ended in spectacular failure, with some spacecraft crashing or blowing to pieces.
Spirit's successful landing bucked the trend of failed missions to Mars. Just one in three past attempts to land on the planet has succeeded. British scientists said Sunday they would keep trying to contact their probe, the Beagle 2, which was supposed to land on Mars on Christmas.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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