Spirit Getting Better

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (CA) were getting ready Friday to roll the Mars rover Opportunity off its lander, as its beleaguered twin, Spirit, began transmitting scientific data for the first time in more than 10 days.

Spirit's problems were apparently solved when JPL engineers deleted about 1700 "non-essential files" from its internal drive. They then rebooted the rover's computer and returned it to normal operating mode, whereas before, it had been in "crippled" or safe mode.

"I'm pleased to report that it seems to be working fine," said Glenn Reeves, the mission's chief software engineer. "We alleviated the problem."

Opportunity Knocks

In the meantime, Spirit's twin rover, Opportunity, was being readied to leave its lander at 12:30 a.m. EST Saturday morning. Compared to the obstructions Spirit faced, Opportunity appears to have a clear path to its first destination.

"At this point we have a very benign egress path so we're not too worried," said systems engineer Daniel Limonadi.

Opportunity sits half a world away from Spirit, conducting the same sort of search for signs that water once covered the now desolate Red Planet. Opportunity does suffer one problem. A faulty thermostat repeatedly turns itself off and on without being commanded to do so by JPL. It controls the heating units that keep the vehicle from overheating. At this point, engineers don't believe it to be a major problem.

Already, Opportunity is providing JPL scientists with a wealth of data, including some that indicates there was indeed a lot of water surrounding its landing zone. Opportunity is on the Meridiani Planum, inside a small crater -- 66 feet wide and 10 feet deep -- not far from an outcropping of pale bedrock.

It's that bedrock which could hold the key to determining once and for all whether water ran freely over the surface of Mars millenia ago. Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator, said Opportunity's mini-thermal imaging spectrometer (mini-TES) seems to have confirmed the presence of the iron-bearing mineral gray hematite near the bedrock. On Earth, hematite generally forms in bodies of water where there's a strong presence of lava rich in iron. The Mars Global Surveyor first detected possible deposits of hematite about the size of Oklahoma on the Martian surface. That discovery led to the selection of Opportunity's landing site.

"We're still in the process of looking at the data," Arvidson said. "But if you look at the mini-TES team they have huge smiles on their faces."

FMI: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov