| Contents |
|
Here is a list of all the Martian probes and spacecraft.
Spirit Lander Images
 |
 |
 | |
 |
|
 | |
 |
 |
 |
On the 9th, the Spirit rover has successfully unfolded itself.
The rover has moved back about 10 inches (25 centimeters) and turned 45 degrees. These were the first maneuvers planned in preparation for having Spirit roll 10 feet (3 meters) down a ramp onto the Martian surface.
At 0800 GMT, 15 January 2004, the Spirit rover rolled down the three- metre-ramp on to Mars.
The rover encountered a 10-centimetre drop, descending at an angle of 115 degrees and heading in a north-west direction.
Traces of carbonate minerals showed up in the rover's first survey .
Carbonates form in the presence of water.
The cameras (one mega-pixel really!) onboard are equivalent to a 96 megapixel camera when they generate 4,000 pixels x 24,000 pixels panoramic images.
The rover stopped to investigate a large rock.
The boulder - dubbed Adirondack - was chosen because its surface is
flat and dust-free and therefore ideal to grind.
The results so far reveal the presence of the iron compound olivine, which is a product of volcanic activity.
Adirondack is volcanic based olivine basalt on first microscopic
image and the first Mössbauer spectrum.
The Spirit rover is being commanded during sol 36, which ends at 5:21 a.m. Monday, PST, to back away from Adirondack, drive past the south side of the now-empty lander, and begin a trek northeast toward a crater nicknamed "Bonneville."
| Spirit is Back: The RAT Brush Removes Dust From Surface Of Adirondack | |||||
 |
| ||||
The next two potential targets are the light-colored rocks, nicknamed Cake and Blanco.
 |
 |
Launched |
The rock abrasion tool on NASA's Spirit rover ground off the surface of a patch 45.5 millimeters (1.8 inches) in diameter and 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.
The Columbia Astronauts Get spirit lander site Mountains named after them.
|
 |
Cake and Blanco |
for interactive 360o view of the surface
Gusev crater is an ancient impact crater about 150 km in diameter located in the Aeolis region of Mars. Aeolis is located between the foot of the ancient and heavily cratered highlands in the south; and the younger plains of Elysium Planitia to the north, on the Martian equator. (Landing site 14.59S, 175.30E GUSEV CRATER)
to download this 352x240 MPEG-1, Flyover of Gusev Crater (3 MB ).
The crater lies at the outlet of one of the largest, over 900 km long, valley networks on Mars, Ma'adim Vallis.
The outlet at Gusev crater has the appearance of a large delta, where the sedimentation has been eroded and appears to be cut into by subsequent `floods`. Originally it is thought that the crater was once completely filled by immense water flows from Ma'adim Vallis and up to 1000 meters deep!
Nasa scientists are working to restore contact with their robotic probe on Mars, which is no longer responding.
The Mars rover Spirit has stopped sending data back in what the agency calls a "serious" breakdown.
Experts say it may have been caused by a problem with the computer software controlling transmissions with earth.
When its troubles began on Wednesday, the six-wheeled robotic geologist was parked in front of a football-sized rock, its tool-laden arm extended and prepared to grind the rock's surface.
It seems Spirit started transmitting "pseudo-noise", a random series of zeroes and ones.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS.
Wed 1430 GMT - Weak signal cuts short commands .
Wed 1513 GMT - No high gain antenna contact made .
Wed 1747 GMT - Mars Odyssey pass, but no data received .
Thu 0302 GMT - Mars Global Surveyor received a signal from the rover suggesting that its UHF radio was on.
Thu 0536 GMT - Mars Odyssey pass receives no data.
Thu 0800 GMT - No "direct-to-Earth" link established .
Fri 0310 GMT -Failed attempt to contact Spirit via Mars Express.
Nasa said two signals were captured on Friday 23rd, by an antenna of the international Deep Space Network near Madrid, Spain.
The first communication with Spirit occurred at 1234 GMT and lasted for 10 minutes. The data rate was weak at 10 bits per second.
The second contact came at 1326 GMT and lasted 20 minutes, with the data fed at a rate of 120 bits per second.
Programmers at the JPL have traced the problem to the rover's flash RAM ,which it uses to maintain its filesystems. They are using a ramdisk in the rover's RAM to bypass the bad flash memory, and are working on a workaround for the bad flash.
Mission controllers have started loading a "script" on the rover designed to locate the root cause of the problem. The problem involved file management" problems with the two types of memory used by Spirit: (Ram and flash). It seems as if hundreds of computer files that have accumulated on the Mars rover Spirit may be the cause of problems that have crippled it.
Basically the space required in the rover's Ram memory to manage the data files stored in its flash memory ran out due to the build-up of files. So all they have to do is to delete them...
The Recovering Spirit Sends A New Picture....
Spirit has resumed using its high-gain antenna, which speeds transmission of the data needed to debug the rover's problems, and wipe its flash memory clean
The rovers contain most powerful CPU's ever to have been sent to another planet. The operating system, VxWorks OS, made by Wind River Systems Inc. runs on the radiation-hardened (military-grade chips, by IBM IIRC.) 20-MHz Rad 6000 CPU (PowerPC-compatible) module aboard the NASA rovers. (Sounds like an Amiga to me...)
 |
|
| To watch realplayer stream of `The sky at night` (Febuary). |
| to download PC screensaver. (2,2Mb) |
| to download Marsrover animation. |
| Webcast | - NASA Science Briefing - 06/06/2002 |
| Mars `Spirit` vista | 115 Kb download.
|
| Mars Planet Surface 4096x2048 | 821 Kb download.
|
| Mars Planet Surface 8192x4096 | 13.3 Mb download. |
| More | information on Mars. |
| Images | from the viking landers. |
| To play the Drake Equation game |
| Please go to the | Forum page for the Latest News. |
| PC Freeware program Mars Previewer II
Shows the current phase of Mars and allows you to point and identify the major features, displaying their coordinates. Hum, for Windows...
| |
 |
A PC freeware version of the primary software tool used by NASA scientists to operate the Mars Exploration Rovers. Download Maestro for free and use it to follow along with the rovers' progress during the mission. You can use Maestro to view pictures from Mars in 2D and 3D and create simplified rover activity plans. During the mission, updates will be released for Maestro containing the latest images from Mars. (38.15 MB)
Remember to download the first Maestro Mars data update, which contains the first images acquired by Spirit on Mars!
|
 |
Mars24 is a freeware cross-platform Java application and applet which displays a graphical representation of Mars showing the current sun- and nightsides of Mars, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format. Other displays include a plot showing the relative orbital positions of Mars and Earth and a diagram showing the solar angle for a given location on Mars. (683.59 Kb)
|
 | Mars, the Next Frontier: August 2003 In this extended Sky-at-night programme, Patrick Moore talks to Sir Arthur C Clarke about terraforming and manned exploration, and to Beagle 2's creator, Professor Colin Pillinger. |
|
|
|
