D-Bone
Dec 28th '06, 01:02 PM
NASA?s Opportunity and Spirit Mars rovers are on the prowl. Science teams are plotting out new escapades for the twin robots?new destinations certain to reveal more secrets from the red planet.
Within Meridiani Planum, the Opportunity rover is relaying great pictures of Victoria Crater and its walls, said Steve Squyres, lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
So far, the story at Victoria is surprisingly similar to what rover scientists saw at Endurance Crater, a feature they closely studied for months back in 2004.
Squyres told SPACE.com that the rover?s Panoramic Camera (Pancam) is telling Mars researchers that the rocks in the crater are mostly ?fossilized dunes??with layering that preserves clear evidence of ancient transport by wind.
Opportunity?s Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) has revealed that this material is sulfate-rich all the way down, Squyres said. Mini-TES characterizes the martian terrain by using thermal infrared spectroscopy.
?So the picture we got back at Endurance, with a sulfate-rich dune field and lots of acidic groundwater, seems to apply here as well?several kilometers to the south,? Squyres added. ?This was a big, long-lived dune field and there was lots of water here.?
Read More: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/061228_rovers_update.html
Within Meridiani Planum, the Opportunity rover is relaying great pictures of Victoria Crater and its walls, said Steve Squyres, lead scientist of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) project from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
So far, the story at Victoria is surprisingly similar to what rover scientists saw at Endurance Crater, a feature they closely studied for months back in 2004.
Squyres told SPACE.com that the rover?s Panoramic Camera (Pancam) is telling Mars researchers that the rocks in the crater are mostly ?fossilized dunes??with layering that preserves clear evidence of ancient transport by wind.
Opportunity?s Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) has revealed that this material is sulfate-rich all the way down, Squyres said. Mini-TES characterizes the martian terrain by using thermal infrared spectroscopy.
?So the picture we got back at Endurance, with a sulfate-rich dune field and lots of acidic groundwater, seems to apply here as well?several kilometers to the south,? Squyres added. ?This was a big, long-lived dune field and there was lots of water here.?
Read More: http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/061228_rovers_update.html