NASA Increases The Bandwidth

NASA says it's upped the data exchange rates with the Mars rovers Spirit, allowing for more information to pass between the exploratory robot and its controllers on Earth.

Considering that cable modem might be slightly impractical, NASA's connection with the rovers now runs at about five times the speed of a dial-up internet connection -- 256kbps. The speeded up transfer rate allows faster transmission of both pictures and data.

That rate is about twice as fast as the rate that had been established between controllers and both rovers after they landed. NASA plans to up the bandwidth in its connection with Opportunity soon.

To establish the faster connection, the rovers communicate via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Signals are then relayed from high above the red planet to and from Earth.

Both rover missions, a combined $820 million effort, are going reasonably well, after Spirit balked as Opportunity was about to land. Opportunity's journey across the sands of Mars was interrupted Friday when its robot arm wouldn't stow properly. But Opportunity did complete an initial survey of its immediate surroundings.

Thursday, Spirit didn't start its trek toward a crater as planned because the temperature was much colder than anticipated. The current sent through vital parts of the rover's mast failed to keep the equipment warm enough to keep its antenna aligned with Earth. The sun eventually warmed the antennae assembly enough to fix that problem and, Friday, Spirit galloped (remember, it's all relative on Mars) about 80 feet toward the crater. At that rate, it'll take almost a week for Spirit to reach its target, which is about 1,122 feet from the vehicle's starting position.

"I'm very pleased to report that we have two very busy rovers on the surface of Mars," said Art Thompson, a robotics engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (CA). Thompson said Spirit is in "outstanding" health these days.

Both rovers are scouring the Martian surface for signs of water -- the precursor of life as we know it. They hope to find it in nearby formations of hematite, which forms in the presence of water and iron.

On the other side of Mars from Spirit's landing site, Opportunity presented its team of scientists and engineers with what the British would call "a real poser:" a finely-layered rock (sedimentary?) covered with BB-sized granules of... something. The layers of the rock aren't parallel as they might be in Earth-born sedimentary rock, suggesting they formed under what NASA euphemistically calls a "dynamic" environment. One theory has it that the material may have been formed by volcanic ash the blew across the barren Martian surface.

"I am stumped. I have no idea how they got there," said scientist Wendy Calvin of the University of Nevada in Reno. Yeah, but admit it. This is the stuff we went there to find, right?

FMI: http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home