monday, january 26, 2004
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the university daily kansan
5A
Successful landings bring new views of Red Planet
Courtesy of KRT
This image taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's hazard-identification camera shortly after the rover's successful landing shows the view from behind the rover.
By Becca Evanhoe
bevanhoe@kansan.com
Kansas staff writer
Six months after KU students saw Mars at its closest in 50,000 years, the Red Planet is brought back into view.
But unlike last August, when students observed Mars through telescopes, now pictures taken by two robotic rovers on the planet's surface show Mars in more detail than ever before.
NASA launched the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, seven months ago. Spirit, which landed Jan. 3, has experienced technical difficulties but is back on track after this weekend. Opportunity landed yesterday halfway around the planet from Spirit. It is already sending back photos of the darkest, strangest landscape ever seen on Mars.
The golf cart-sized rovers are each loaded with a camera and a microscope, three instruments that analyze rocks and soils and various other equipment, such as
magnets and sundials. The rovers will act like living geologists walking on Mars, performing onsite experiments on the rocks and soil that they encounter.
Scientists already know frozen water exists on Mars, but they hope the rovers will prove whether liquid water existed long ago as well, and give an idea of how Mars evolved as a planet.
The Mars seen in satellite pictures is red and dry. But Tom Cravens, professor of astronomy and physics, said that the Red Planet wasn't necessarily that bleak billions of years ago.
"Some of the more suspicious-looking features could have been caused by running water or lava," said Cravens, who has worked on several other NASA missions. "Now we can get on-the-spot verification, the truth on what's been seen from orbit."
Mars is covered with a mineral called grey hematite, which is also found on Earth. Grey hematite can either be formed by hot water or volcanic activity. One goal of
the Mars mission is to discover the real cause of the hematite formation.
"It would be interesting if there was once running water," he said. "Part of the excitement is that if there was liquid water, life could have existed millions of years ago, in theory."
Shannon Cline, Wichita junior, shares the excitement of Cravens and others across the globe. She has been following the Mars Exploration Rover Mission since December after seeing a video presentation at Wichita's Exploration Place science center.
Cline said that often students got bogged down with school and daily life, and didn't think about the bigger picture.
"It's easy to get stuck in that bubble," Cline said. "But this is something that can really challenge your thinking — to think and learn about something millions of miles away."
Cravens said that the mission would help figure out the basic
history of Mars and our solar system.
Studying some of the primitive features of Mars that could be compared to early Earth's can help scientists explain some of the geological aspects of our own planet.
"We have some ideas of why each planet evolved as it did," he said. "The mission will help us to tell the life stories of Mars and the planets in general, and see the big picture."
Cline and Craven agreed that part of the mission's appeal is in the spirit of exploration.
"It teaches us to challenge ourselves to reach 'impossible' goals. It shows that if we let technology grow, nothing is impossible anymore." Cline said.
Students and Mars-enthusiasts worldwide can see images sent back from the two rovers on NASA's Web site devoted to the 90-day mission at marsrovers.nasa.gov/home.
—Edited by Collin LaJoie
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