The 1 pm press conference is about to start. I'm assuming they're going to show all the new images, maybe they'll have used the DIMES images to get a better handle on our location, and maybe they'll have a better idea what those "slabby" bedrock are.
I've been poking at the lastest images in photoshop and it sure looks like it could be big slabs of basalt and not the large-scale laters stacked vertically that I thought I could see in the early thumbnails. We'll see what Steve has to say...
Pete Theisinger: Good morning. Exciting couple of days. Forgive my hoarse voice. Spirit is still serious but moving toward guarded. Rough start with DSN but worked through that. Reset computer into the non-flash mode as planned. Expect to get Odyssey pass in a couple of minutes then we'll shut vehicle down for the night. Batteries are fully charged. Thermal looked good. A little cold but probably because we shut down early yesterday. Our truths are often temporary :) so let me describe today's truth. We went through a few resets because of DSN problems. Not the rover's fault, ours. We got the flash metadata indicating that the flash hardware is fine. File management software not robust enough for our operations. Two other theories not as well in competition. One, some kind of error or hardware issue on motor control board. Two, the solar event on Wednesday. Flash memories can be sensitive to high energy when being read from or written to. Tomorrow we'll have more of the same. I think we're kind of on the way to a normal recovery here. Likely you'll be hearing about status from Jennifer or one of the other managers rather than me. Good chance we'll have a very good rover when we get back up. Once again, don't expect us to be driving for a couple weeks, maybe three.
Arthur Amador: Spirit's older sister, Opportunity. We have two rovers on Mars on opposite sides of the planet. Now we have to talk about Spirit local solar and Opportunity local solar. 1 PM here, 5 PM at Gusev and 5 am at Meridiani. Spirit ending its day, Opportunity about to begin her's. Opportunity continues to send telemetry in excellent health, green across the board. She shut down at 5PM scheduled to wake up 8am local solar at Meridiani. ACS reporting all green, pitch nose up at 5 degrees. Data management says 140 megabits in Flash. Received 18 megabits from Odyssey last night. Excellent link quality with Odyssey. Another 20 megabits from Odyssey this morning. Mechanical deployments all nominal. Mobility reported a good egress path in the straight ahead dir, the -Y petal. Deck height in that direction looks like 34-41 cm. Pancam is healthy. Array performed as expected, batteries charged. Thermal in agreement with model predicts. 17°C on batteries. Internal temperature 30-35°C within 2° of predicts. Telecom good link performance on Odyssey. Didn't get MGS pass, didn't lock on carrier. Looking into that from MGS and Odyssey teams. Received Pancam and DIMES images in last Odyssey pass. Running master sequence on board and no new faults. Tomorrow is sol 2 and it's an assessment day. Looking at engineering data we got down. Looking good.
Andrew Johnson: To talk about DIMES. MER landers have a camera for descent on one corner of the lander next to the radar. As lander descends the camera takes three images to estimate horizontal velocity. Combines hardware and software. Here are Meridiani DIMES images. Main feature there is a crater, about 150 meters across. Image is about 1 mile across taken at alt at 1.25 miles. Next image, descending toward the surface. We expect that to happen ;-) Toward the center of the image is the location that we believe we touched down. We're definitely not inside the large crater, possibly one of the smaller craters. This is the final image and it's about 3/4 mile across. You can see a dark dot left of the crater and that is in fact the shadow of the parachute. We've come down somewhere in the center of the images. Software performed well, estimated velocity of 10 meters/sec and did not cause the rockets to fire.
Steve Squyres:I wanna start by congratulating Andrew and the whole DIMES team. Great pictures. I keep thinking this can't possibly get any better and it just does. We knew going in that there are two fundamental geologic units. One is a thick sequence of layered rocks, fairly light in tone and then draped on top of that is a thin veneer or coating and that's the stuff we think contains the hematite. My fondest hope was that we'd land close enough to a crater that we would have a chance of traversing to it. Instead, we've scored a 300 million mile hole in one and we're inside a crater. It's not the big one Andrew showed you but we can get to that one :D. Pete and I talked about, gee, wouldn't it be nice to do a TCM and get to a place that would get us closer to a crater. I've learned a lesson to never ask for a final TCM. I don't know what the odds would be of us hitting a crater like this but it's just phenomenal. The crater that we are in is roughly 20 meters in diameter. You're seeing the rim all around us. We don't have the depth, probably a couple meters deep. When you look off in the distance you can see that wonderful rock outcrop. We've got those two geologic features within 10 meters :) It's right there in front of us, exposed. And then we have this fine-grained stuff which must be the hematite. In principal, we could spend the entire mission in this crater but there's nice stuff out there. This is the first high-res image from the Pancam showing the outcropping. This is just a taste. Sometime soon, on sol 2 at Meridiani we are going to take a 180° color, full resolution panorama that will expose this whole outcrop. The crater has actually exposed a stratigraphic cross section. This DIMES image, we are not in the big crater, it's probably 150 meters in diameter. It is surely within, I think, our reach :D. This is wonderful stuff for driving on. I envision we'll drive off lander, look at soil and investigate the hematite mystery, then drive to the outcrop and learn, understand it, then we drive out of the crater, look around, and head for the big one :D. I'll turn it over to Doug. He is an expert on minerology of Martian soils.
Doug Ming: Science team is absolutely thrilled to be here. If it got any better I couldn't stand it. Reason we're here is that MGS TES suggested that there was crystalline hematite, an iron oxide material. You'll notice it's quite a bit darker and very red. It only takes a few percent hematite to turn it red. What are the hypotheses? There are 7 or 8 or 10 of them Briefly touch on three. Water is a key objective and a couple include water. One leading candidate hypothesis is that the hematite formed in a lake or lacustrine environ. Over a period of time, metamorphic processes transform into what we see. Second is hydrothermal alteration of basaltic glass. Mauna Kea is analog on Earth. Water interacting with basaltic glass, begins to hydrate and one byproduct is nanophase iron oxides like hematite. Third potential way is the oxidation of a mineral called magnetite in basalts in lavas. So, there are a variety of ways that this hematite can form, aqueous, weathering, or oxidation. The payload we have has the unique capability to identify this. If we find goetheite, that'd be a slam dunk for lacustrine hypothesis. Mossbauer can tell us if we have that. The whole payload, Mini-TESS, APXS, Pancam, and MI will all work together. If it's oxidation of magnetite we may find magnetite and our payload, particularly the Mossbauer, will be able to identify that.
Q. Which of these three theories is conducive to life?
Steve: any of the liquid water hypothesis. Lakes, or hotsprings would point in that direction. Which of those two? Depends probably more on how long that environment was there. We have well defined, testable hypotheses and the tools to test those.
Q. Steve, could you elaborate more on why so excited about bedrock.
Steve: thing about bedrock is that you know where it came from. In Gusev, we knew going in that it was a pretty impacted, churned up, plus we've got a big valley that carried a lot of stuff. Really mixed up in Gusev. Result is that we see rocks but we don't know where they came from. That crater? Deris flow? Lava? We just don't know. Tough puzzle. The beauty of bedrock is that you know where it came from. We can say unambiguously that they are related, what their point of origin was. The other thing is that instead of being busted up, you've got discreet layers. Simple principle of stratigraphy that stuff on top is younger. Having access to bedrock is wonderful for unraveling the history of a place.
Q. That large crater in DIMES is very dark in the center with very bright rim. Why?
Steve: Layering that's been exposed by this crater. We've got this unit of darker hematite on top and a unit of thick below that. The little crater we're in exposes a meter or two of this layered material. That big crater probably excavated 30, 40 meters down. If we can look down into it or even go down into it is a much deeper cross section. You're seeing the exposure on the walls. Down on the floor, we don't know. No question but that going to it we will have the chance to see deeper down into Mars.
Q. How steep a terrain the rover can handle. Getting out of this one and into the next one.
Arthur: depends on the soil at this particular site. 15-20 degree capability but it depends on the soil.
Steve: based on topography we've seen so far, I don't think climbing out of this one will be insurmountable.
Q. When you say the flash hardware was working does that mean you're moving away from hardware problem hypothesis.
Pete: Software only problem theory is gaining strength. Hardware theory is losing strength. It was very interesting....software has a bunch of module developers and they were looking at some of the reset logs. Developers arguing about which module "not mine". Software only is gaining some currency.
Q. EDL, talk about luck, but you've built a pretty robust system. What's your take of expanding the envelope of other more extreme sites?
Pete: I would still not give him Melas if he asked. What has to happen is the project has to support an examination of exactly how robust this was. Way too early to decide. It performed very well. Wind profile at Gusev was challenging but DIMES tiers system delivered. We thought Meridiani would present less challenge and so far that looks correct. System performed very well.
Q. Have any of you slept?
Pete: we slept for three years. I got 4 hours.
Arthur: I got about an hour last night.
Steve: landings are special. Once you get into Marstime, it's fine. I got into the Gusev groove. I was getting 6,7, 8 hours sleep. What's hard is changing rovers. The jump to Opportunity was a 12 hour time zone change and that's hard. I've been sleeping in little 2 and 3 hours.
Doug: Like grad school. Key to get 3 or 4, minimally.
Q. In the second of your hydrothermal processes, could you spell it and tell me what role it plays.
Hematite. In these aqueous environments, one particular is called goethite.
Q. Based on DIMES 3, there are a number of smaller craters, any speculation on where we came down?
Steve: working on that now, a little hard to tell exactly. Remember the fantastic capability with the MOC camera on MGS, Mike Malin's camera. Knowing Mike as I do, he's probably planning that image now if he hasn't already.
Andrew: in the center of the DIMES image. We'll have more in a few days.
Q. First glance guess on that outcropping?
Steve: getting out ahead of ourselves here. It is clear from Navcam images that there are parts of the panorama that will show the layers. Right now the one image we've got we're looking down on the top of one of the layers.
Doug: color is unique. Too early too tell with particle sizes. Some could be nanophase or they could be more crystalline. It may be a few hundreds of microns in size.
Steve: the instruments that are really good at seeing hematite aren't even turned on yet.
Q. Does the basic spectra you can do with pancam trend toward hematite.
Steve: we haven't done that yet. All we have is three color pancam.
Q. Will we be able to ascertain toxicity? One day grow plants there?
Doug: When we get the APSX down we'll get a lot of good data on trace elements that will be key. Right now, we can probably grow plants ther but key questions about chlorates and salts that we may have toxicity problems. Get the instrument suite on the surface.
Q. Last night there was lot of talk about how this was unlike anything we've ever seen. Just that we're in a crater?
Steve: much more to it than that. We've landed in a geologic unit that is fundamentally different than anything we've seen. This soil, probably hematite, is different than anything we've seen. We knew going in that this stuff only occurred in a few places (from orbital assets.) Every place we've been so far is littered with boulders and loose debris. See any of that here? Here what we see is bedrock outcrop and this bazaar red gray soil, neither being remotely like Viking or Pathfinder of Gusev.
Q. We identify hematite with a streak test like an armature geologist.
Doug: probably difficult. We will definitely be churning up the place.
Q. We know bedrock is where it was born. One uncertainty at Gusev is origin of fine material. Do you have any initial hypothesis about fine material here?
Steve: if it's the hematite bearing stuff, Doug has already given you the hypotheses. You don't see this concentration anywhere on Mars so chances are it originated near here.
Q. DIMES images, is it safe to assume that the smeared out bright rims are similar bedrock outcroppings.
Steve: I think so. Certainly in the initial Pancam images the bedrock seems to be lighter in tone. It's a reasonable expectation that is indeed what it is.
Q. Could one of you review time sequence of standup, rolloff and mini-TES.
Arthur: we've just begun a set of critical standup. We have to be concerned about Spirit and any lessons there. Matt Wallace said you could estimate anywhere between a week and a half and two weeks. Won't stand up for a few sols.
Pete: Spirit egressed on sol 12. HGA and airbag work. Even though front egress path looks good, I think the time will be about the same as we look at Sprit problems. A few days of soil measurements before we do the drive to the outcrop. Plenty of time for Steve to take Pancam images to decide which rock he wants to RAT first.
Q: estimate of distance to big crater and outcropping details. Shapes of what you're seeing.
Andrew: Guessing, half a mile or less.
Steve: we've seen so little of it. Navcam images tell us it's there, broken up in segments. We just barely nicked it with the Pancam postcard. Only at the far right edge did we just barely nick the outcrop and you're not seeing a slice through it. As we work farther to the right we'll actually get steep faces where we'll see slices through the outcrop. When we get that, we'll start getting into morphology. We don't know the range with a lot of precision. Something like 10 meters away.
Q. Since they're twins will the Spirit problem be lurking for Opportunity?
Pete: Three theories, most probable is an inherent software problem with file system. If so, then systemic to the two. We'll either set rules to avoid it or we'll change it. Second most probable is that it's hardware triggered, then it's local to Opportunity. If it's third most probable and solar, we could be exposed to it again and we'd need a way to recover better. I think it's likely to be systemic to the two but likely to be easily avoided or patched. There was a heavy ion or neutron event that was detected by HEND on Odyssey but not detected at Earth. We're in different solar longitudes. Particles that hit Mars can easily not hit Earth.
Q. that outcropping is in the crater?
Steve: yeah. inner wall.
Natalie: Next brief at 9am tomorrow. Latest images from Opportunity and update on Spirit.
Q. Hematite is very unusual. At Gusev we have the valley. What's the broader geologic setting of Meridiani.
Steve: I think Ray did a pretty good job with the briefing he did shortly before we landed. Underlying ancient terrain very large area of this layered materials. Few morphologic clues how it got there. At Gusev, unambiguous evidence that stuff got washed in there by water. Here you have this broad layered base and draped over it is this fine-grained material, the hematite bearing stuff. How it got there is the interesting question. Geologic relationships need to be worked out.
*End of briefing*
Posted by asa at January 25, 2004 12:59 PM