It's 9am so it's press briefing time. I'll get the notes posted as soon as the briefing is concluded.
I think I mentioned it before but in case I hadn't, David Price reminds us of a very good Mars blog, the Mars Rover Mission Blog which has good regular updates. Be sure to check it out.
Once again, while I am trying to capture as much of the precise language used as I can, these should not be thought of as direct quotes. I'm just not a fast enough typist for that. Also, I think I'm getting about 90% of what's said, so don't think of them as a complete record either. With that out of the way, on to the briefing.
emcee: Veronica McGregor (media relations)
Dr Albert Haldeman (deputy project scientist)
Dr. Phil Christensen (payload lead for mini-TES Ariz St. Univ.)
Dr. Steve Squyred (princ. investigator)
Pete Theisinger (proj. manager)
Matt Wallace (mission manager)
Albert: Spirit continues to perform very well. 72% of mission success panorama on the ground. Patience pays off. Patient but eager. I'mg going to show a graphic comparing performance (MB of images recorde per sol) on sol 6 with sojourner and pathfinder. That keeps it easy to be patient. I am eager to hear what Phil has to say.
Phil: I will second that, and appreciate your patience. We've been working long and hard to get mini-TES data processed. Gratitude to the group of engineers and scientists that got us here especially the mini-TES team. I'll begin by focus on a couple of octants we have acquired. This is the panoramic camera underlay that we've been looking at. There are rocks, and an area similar to sleepy hollow. This is the mini-TES temperature data. Mini-TES does two things, temperature and spectrum. I want to start with looking at temp. Each one of those spots represents a point where mini-TES looks. Each spot is 4 seconds. The next image shows that temp data laid on top of that Pancam data. We can see the rocks are cool, that's what we expect. Rocks can conduct heat inward. Fine-grained materials get very hot. You can see a couple of rocks nearby and indeed they are cool. As we sweep across this small grained material, I can tell you from the data that it's very fine grained. It's probably fluffy. To give you a sense of scale, rocks are approx 10° cooler than the average and the fine-grained material in the sleepy hollow-like depression is 5° warmer than average. You can see one rock that's very blue (cool). We'll be using this data to navigate the rover to desirable targets and maybe avoid the warmer areas. The "tails" behind rocks are cooler coarser-grained and may even be sand. Again, this is that image looking off to the left. Next slide shows a view of this hollow showing the marked difference in temperature. Next slide we took an area that was pretty average and I'm gonna show a set of mini-TES infrared spectra within that box. (slide with spectra graph). This is a measure of the amount of heat, of energy given off by the surface and the atmosphere in spectra. There are two curves here. The yellow one is the mini-TES data and the red one is from MGS/TES. First thing I was excited about was how well these things matched. Calibration success. We have a laboratory quality spectra on the surface of Mars, better quality than my lab here. It's working extremely well, high quality. Next slide shows CO2 in the atmosphere. There's a deviation there on the right-hand side that I believe is water vapor. That's not a surprise, we expected water-vapor in the Martian atmosphere. The next slide shows a depression in the line that suggests a Silicate mineral. We'll explore it. The next slide shows a very sharp peak that shows water, a few percent, bound in the minerals. We've know from orbit but to be there on the ground with it under us is exciting. The last slide shows carbonates. We came looking for carbonates. I want to very carefully caution everyone that there are carbonates but in orbital data, we've found minor amounts of carbonates in a lot of dust in many different places on the surface of Mars. Now we can begin to chase this carbonate. Where does it occur, what soil does it occur in. One theory is that it's from an interaction with water vapor in the atmosphere. Another model is that it might be from the water we came to look for in Gusev. Incredibly exciting. In the first couple of days, in the first couple of spectra we have found a number of things that we're going to be tracking down over the next weeks and months. Rocks are different, they have different temperatures and different spectra. Rocks' spectra is very different from the soil. But we're dealing with small rocks here (holds up a softball sized rock) and the rocks don't fill mini-TES' field of view. When we get out near rocks that can fill our field of view, Mini-TES will have a field day. I had an idea a while ago that friends called crazy but I think it might be fun. We're planning an activity called "School House Rocks". We'll be calling on students to send us rocks from all over the world and we'll measure them and see if we can see if there are rocks in your back yard that are similar to rocks on Mars.
Steve: We had just a wonderful day yesterday. From a science perspective, maybe the best day since we landed. I can't top Phil and the min-TES data. That is just a fantastic instrument. I want to talk about these results and how they add to our understanding in these early days on Gusev crater. We are still in the "multiple working hypotheses" days. There are several interpretations of carbonates. One, the interaction with water in the atmosphere. The other possibility, and I am of like mind on these two and we have now way of knowing which one is right yet, is that it's telling us about properties of what's gone on in Gusev crater. In standing bodies of liquid water it is possible to precipitate carbonates. It is also a possibility that imagine you have Gusev, filled with water, precipitate carbonates, water goes away, not yet lithified (become rock) so it stays a loose material. You could have this mixture of sediments and potentially carbonates. We have other rocks transported to this location somehow, don't know how yet. So you gotta ask what are these carbonates telling us. The beauty is that we can find out. If it's from the atmosphere then it should be fine grained dust. If it's from Gusev then it should be coarser grained and possibly buried. We're going to be chasing this for weeks and months. We can go out and look at different patches of soil. It's going to be really interesting to dig a hole. Not only do we have multiple hypotheses but we have a payload that can get at the answer. We had a jubilant science team last night. First mini-TES, also some very good engineering news.
Pete: I haven't talked to you since landing night. It's been a week. A week ago today was the day before landing press briefing. If anyone had walked into the room and said that they'd give us a beautifully functional lander on the surface but it would take four days longer to stand it up, I'd have said "Sold!!" We have a beautiful lander. People are calling it a $400 million lander. It's not. It's priceless. We're not going to take any inappropriate risks. The team is performing flawlessly. We're proceeding in a measured, temperate way. Being pushed into inappropriate risks is something that we've learned about over the last few years (various reports). We're going to be brave but not stupid. This team has given an awful lot to be where we are today. Going far better than we have any right to expect.
Matt: It's a little hard to compete with that spectacular Mini-TES data. We started our sixth morning on Mars with our tradition of a wake-up song. Today it was Bob Marley's "Get Up Stand Up". As many of you know in order to fit within the constraints of our vehicle, we had to do a little magic to compress the rover. Part of the transformation to our mobile configuration occurred on the first day, the solar panels, the HGA, the mast. Yesterday was the next major step which involved getting the rover up off the deck and getting mobility components locked in. Footage from ATLO operations down the road at JPL (opportunity footage showing lift process). Lifting up about 15 cm. Front wheels rotating out and around into their mobile configuration. You're looking at the front of the rover here and the wheels continue down until the linkages lock into position. You'll see a little bump here in the opposite direction to check that the wheels are locked into position. Then we can lower the entire vehicle down and put weight on the system which locks more linkages into position. This is a very critical and complex operation done autonomously by the rover on the surface of Mars. We're very, very pleased to see the rover complete this part of the standup process. We completed our attempts at retraction of the basepetal airbag so we went ahead and lowered the front left panel to get us flat for the activity you just saw. These pictures were taken at the front of the rover. Wheels have rotated out of the way and you can see the quick lift and check of the linkage. That was rerecorded by the rover itself. (loop, almost animation, of several images). Before and after from the mast camera as well. Good verification between imagery and telemetry that the rover did everything we asked it to do. Tomorrow completion of standup activity. Retraction of the screw that lifted the rover up and deployment of the rear wheels. In addition to that, we're going to do a very short movement of the front left petal to characterize our ability to move that petal. Our baseline is to turn 120degrees to the right and traverse down in that direction. We've done this many, many times and we're very comfortable doing this. The current configuration that we have with the lander situated, it is as good as we could have hoped for. Egress planned for sol 13 or sol 14.
Q. Dramatic differences in color across those images taken with Mini-TES data. Can you say more about the kind of variations. About the carbonates, you see them at a couple percent from orbit, estimate from down here?
Phil: The temperatures do vary but composition of the soil doesn't seem to vary a lot. There aren't very many rocks in our view. There are about 20 that show spectral variability. The temperature variations may be due to the compactness. It doesn't take much carbonate to produce those absorptions. It's on the 2-5% order, certainly not on the order of say 20%. We'll be looking for concentrations of that material.
Q. So far the mini-TES data don't show any profound new data. CO2 not in MGS data? Why not.
Phil: in the MGS data we went to great pains to remove the CO2 because we're trying to use those data to unravel the surface. As far as the surprises, you're right, at this level, this tiny piece of what we've seen. We're still puzzling it together, the rock we see doesn't look like rocks we expected to see.
Steve: I'm surprised and intrigued by the higher carbonate values. I was surprised by how easy it was to pull out some of these mineral features. Compared to what we're getting from orbit, to pull this data out in 48 hours is amazing.
Phil: This bodes so well for this mission. To do minerology from 5 feet away is going to be amazing.
Q. Variety of the rocks?
Phil: they look like they might be different from imagery but can't say yet.
Q. Did the failure of the temp sensors for the mini-TES' calibration have any impact on this data.
Phil: Other than keeping me from sleeping ;-), no. We have many workarounds.
Q. Do you have further theories as to why the airbags wouldn't retract?
Matt: We know no more and have no real way of proving or disproving. May have broken some of the tendons. The other possibility is that those are just areas of the bag where we don't have tie points and we're retracting other parts of the bag. Telemetry suggests we are pulling something.
Q. In the carbonate image, there were two dips, one mirrored what you're seeing from orbit, the other is unique.
Phil: there are other minerals that have absorbtion features in there. We'll be looking at those. We're confident there's carbonate but there may be subtle differences.
Q. What do you expect to find where? I'm getting the idea that if this lake hypothesis is true and the lake material which is probably very old and still around at the surface then where you'd expect to see something significant is in coarse grained soil and I'm getting the idea that you didn't see carbonate in the rock or you would have mentioned it? So, where are you looking for what and when will you get excited and what will you be looking at when you get excited.
Steve: I'm excited now :D If we find the highest concentration of carbonate in the coarse grains, or subsurface, if we see that kind of thing then it would indicate that the carbonate originated in Gusev. If, on the other hand, we find it in the fine grained dust, it could have blown in from somewhere else. A few sols from now we're going to come to you with a pretty definite determination of where we landed. We're already sure there's gonna be a pretty hefty impact crater within 100 meters of where we are. I think once we crawl off of this lander and start looking at things with APSX, micro-imager, etc., things are gonna change some more. It'll be fascinating.
Phil: my nightmare was that we wouldn't see spectra. We have them and we're going to chase them.
Q. How does it add up that you hypothesized the lake bed might be buried and that carbonates are at the surface.
Steve: If the stuff was blown in by the wind, that's easy. If on the other hand it's stuff intrinsic to Gusev, you have to remember that this area has been pounded for millions of years. Impacts turning up what's underneath. One of the things that made Gusev a prime target was that this churning had the potential to turn things up.
Q. When is sol 13 or 14 in earth time.
Matt: January 15th-ish.
Pete: Thursday or Friday of next week.
Q. Your experience with the instrument gives you confidence. Anything you've learned that you might adjust the instrument for hematite?
Phil: I don't think we're going to have to do anything.
Q. Have you changed how you pick target points?
Steve: Given that we anticipate the egress direction is going to be that way and not dead ahead, we're looking at what kinds of materials and the next place to go. First place is to slap the arm down wherever we are. After that, the "something else" is more likely to be in the new direction.
Q. When we first aired your pictures, the first reaction was the familiarity of the landscape. Any of you had the same reaction?
Phil: I live in Arizona and share that feeling. Several surface missions now, I think we're beginning to develop a familiarity with Mars. The beauty is that it's not the same. It is a strange place and we're just scratching the surface.
Q. Each "dot" in the temperature image, is that an average for that dot? Can you "zoom" in?
Phil: each dot represents a spectrum and we can convert that to a temperature. The instrument can't zoom in. The zoom is the rover's wheels.
Q. Reactions to President's planning on announcing sending humans to Mars. Will Bush be visiting.
Pete: focused on our objectives. Let that play out. No one's talked to me about any high-level visitors.
Q. Where do you stand on EDL changes (for Opportunity)?
Pete: your contacts are excellent :) We've completed (Spirit) EDL reconstruction and we do have a position on whether or not we will have a correction maneuver (for Odyssey). I'll be sending that paper up today. We made a change to the parachute deployment based on dust storm data (for Spirit) based on data from orbital assets. Things are getting better at Meridiani.
Veronica: if anyone has further questions about Schoolhouse Rocks project, info at the website. Also weekend schedule is briefings at 9am Pacific time.
Q. What are the absolute temperatures.
Phil: warmest ground temp is about 5°C and coldest is about -15°C. Those were taken between noon and 2 PM. Atmospheric temperatures we're still working on.
Q. Is there anything you can learn, any science you can do from the lander over these next days, before you roll off, that you can use to determine the history of Gusev.
Phil: I've shown two of the 8 spectra. We still have a lot more to look at. We're just beginning the process. Whether or not we can puzzle out the story of the carbonates - I'm looking forward to doing that from the ground, but we're just getting started with the remote sensing.
Q. Can you tell us what carbonates are and their relationship to water. They represent water that was once there but isn't now?
Steve: Our second theory points to water long ago and not today. Carbonates are a family of minerals that can form under a variety of circumstances. All tend to be easily dissolved in water. For example, limestone is made of calcium carbonate. If you can dissolve it in water, you can precipitate it from water and form carbonate rock. There are a couple reasons carbonates have been of particular interest in the history of Mars. One is that they precipitate out of water. Two is that Mars may have had a denser atmosphere with carbon dioxide and carbonates could be where some of that carbon dioxide went.
Q. Are you moving rocks around in the "Mars yard" to simulate what you're seeing on the surface of Mars.
Matt: The orphan twin here is an engineering model and the answer is yes, that from almost day one we started to reconfigure that to help us validate the sequences and process of the last 6 days.
