Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington April 8, 2004
(Phone: 202/358-1547)
Guy Webster
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
(Phone: 818/354-5011)
RELEASE: 04-122
NASA EXTENDS MARS ROVERS' MISSION
NASA has approved an extended mission for the Mars
Exploration Rovers, handing them up to five months of
overtime assignments, as they finish their three-month prime
mission.
The first of the two, Spirit, met the success criteria set
for its prime mission. Spirit gained check marks in the final
two boxes on April 3 and 5, when it exceeded 600 meters
(1,969 feet) of total drive distance and completed 90 martian
operational days after landing.
Opportunity landed three weeks after Spirit. It will complete
the two-rover checklist of required feats, when it finishes a
90th martian day of operations April 26. Each martian day, or
"sol," lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day.
"Given the rovers' tremendous success, the project submitted
a proposal for extending the mission, and we have approved
it," said Orlando Figueroa, Mars Exploration Program director
at NASA Headquarters, Washington.
The mission extension provides $15 million for operating the
rovers through September. The extension more than doubles
exploration for less than a two percent additional
investment, if the rovers remain in working condition. The
extended mission has seven new goals for extending the
science and engineering accomplishments of the prime mission.
"Once Opportunity finishes its 91st sol, everything we get
from the rovers after that is a bonus," said Dr. Firouz
Naderi, manager of Mars exploration at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif., where the rovers were
built and are controlled. "Even though the extended mission
is approved to September, and the rovers could last even
longer, they also might stop in their tracks next week or
next month. They are operating under extremely harsh
conditions. However, while Spirit is past its 'warranty,' we
look forward to continued discoveries by both rovers in the
months ahead," he added.
JPL's Jennifer Trosper, Spirit mission manager, said even
when a memory-management problem on the rover caused trouble
for two weeks, she had confidence the rover and the
operations team could get through the crisis and reach the
90-sol benchmark. "We never felt it was over, but certainly
when we were getting absolutely no data from the spacecraft
and trying to figure out what happened, we were worried," she
said.
Trosper was less confident about Spirit's prospects for
reaching the criterion of 600 meters by sol 91, given the
challenging terrain of the landing area within Gusev Crater.
On sol 89, Spirit set a short-lived record for martian
driving, with a single-sol distance of 50.2 meters (165 feet)
that pushed the odometer total to 617 meters (2,024 feet).
Two days later, Opportunity shattered that mark with a 100-
meter (328-foot) drive.
Beyond the quantifiable criteria, such as using all research
tools at both landing sites and investigating at least eight
locations, the rovers have returned remarkable science
results. The most dramatic have been Opportunity's findings
of evidence of a shallow body of salty water in the past in
the Mars Meridiani Planum region.
"We're going to continue exploring and try to understand the
water story at Gusev," said JPL's Dr. Mark Adler, deputy
mission manager for Spirit. Spirit is in pursuit of
geological evidence for an ancient lake thought to have once
filled Gusev Crater.
Reaching "Columbia Hills," which could hold geological clues
to that water story, is one of seven objectives for the
extended mission. Opportunity has a parallel one, to seek
geologic context for the outcrop in the "Eagle" crater by
reaching other outcrops in the "Endurance" crater and perhaps
elsewhere. Other science objectives are to continue
atmospheric studies at both sites to encompass more of Mars'
seasonal cycle and to calibrate and validate data from Mars
orbiters for additional types of rocks and soils examined on
the ground.
Three new engineering objectives are to traverse more than a
kilometer (0.62 mile) to demonstrate mobility technologies;
to characterize solar-array performance over long durations
of dust deposition at both landing sites; and to demonstrate
long-term operation of two mobile science robots on a distant
planet. During the past two weeks, rover teams at JPL have
switched from Mars-clock schedules to Earth-clock schedules
designed to be less stressful and more sustainable over a
longer period.
For more information about the project on the Internet,
visit:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
&
http://athena.cornell.edu
-end-
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