Rover’s images tantalizing

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, January 25, 2004

PASADENA, Calif. – The U.S. rover Opportunity settled safely inside a small Martian crater over the weekend and opened its eyes on a dark, brooding landscape unlike any previously seen on the planet, complete with the first outcropping of bedrock ever encountered there.

Flush with their second successful robotic landing in three weeks, and mesmerized by their first glimpses of this surreal new face of Mars, scientists were left groping for words to describe the revelations pouring in from 124 million miles away.

“I will attempt no science analysis because it looks like nothing I’ve ever seen before in my life,” Steve Squyres of Cornell University, lead rover scientist, told the rapt flight control team as Opportunity’s first images began to parade across large projection screens in mission control here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory early Sunday.

He was seeing in some directions a relentlessly smooth surface, darker than any seen by other landers, and lacking the typical rocky rubble. There were disturbed areas of somber red – possibly spots where the rover bounced and removed the overlying dark material, he said. The powder was so fine in spots that it held the imprint of the airbag seams. Then there were the prized outcroppings of light-colored, layered rock – apparently in the rim of the crater – which, he said, should serve as a kind of rare history text revealing the evolution of Mars.

“I’m flabbergasted. I’m astonished. I’m blown away,” Squyres said. “My fondest hope was that we would land close enough to a crater to get to the layered material” that seems to characterize the Meridiani Planum landing site, “and here we are inside a small (one).”

The first black-and-white panoramic image sent back by the lander indicates that Opportunity, which landed Saturday night on Mars, is almost in the middle of a crater that is roughly 20 yards in diameter and perhaps 6 feet deep. Opportunity is on the opposite side of Mars from the Spirit rover.

The rover also transmitted its first color image, which showed a grayish-brown terrain darker than the soil at any previous landing site. The pictures also show outcroppings of bedrock that immediately became potential targets once Opportunity begins roving.

The ailing Spirit – which stopped transmitting Wednesday until engineers regained control early Saturday – was still regarded as being in “serious” condition, project manager Pete Theisinger said Sunday afternoon, but “I think we’ve got a patient well on the way to recovery.”

He said the most popular diagnosis currently is that the problem lies in file management software, not hardware, and engineers are pursuing a solution that could put the rover back on the road in two or three weeks.

Opportunity could roll off its lander in 10 to 14 days, mission manager Arthur Amador said.

The goal of both rovers is to hunt for evidence showing whether Mars ever had water in liquid form long enough for life to evolve.