Mars rover on the prowl for a winter location. Credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell
NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity continues to explore Endeavour crater.
Rover operators are looking for a special parking spot for the robot – just in time to face winter on Mars.
“The power situation for the upcoming Martian winter requires that Opportunity be located on a north facing slope in order to receive enough solar insolation to keep the rover going and still do some science,” said Bill Farrand, a Senior Research Scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He is also part of the science team for the Mars Exploration Rover effort.
“We have been looking for a location with a north facing slope and some outcrop that might contain phyllosilicate minerals. The outcrops along the crest of Cape York are intermittent…so we are trying to find a good spot that has both interesting rocks and the north-facing slope,” Farrand told this Coalition reporter.
Phyllosilicates, so-called because of their characteristic structure in thin layers (‘phyllo’ = thin layer), are the alteration products of igneous minerals (minerals of magmatic origin) sustaining a long-term contact with water. An example of phyllosilicate is clay.
Farrand said, at the moment, no big new science results to report so far, “although we are definitely on rocks different from those that Opportunity was driving over on the Meridiani plains so we are in the process of trying to best understand the geologic situation.”
Opportunity and its rover twin, Spirit, completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004.
Both rovers continued for years of bonus, extended missions. Both have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.
Mars rover, Spirit, stopped communicating in 2010. Opportunity continues its work at Endeavour.
NASA will launch the next-generation Mars rover, car-size Curiosity, next month, for arrival at Mars’ Gale crater in August 2012.
By Leonard David