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Mars Exploration Rover Missions - Success!



" 20 months after first sign up and a 300 million mile trip across interplanetary space, I am delighted to see NASA's Spirit rover successfully deploy my electronic signature onto the Martian sands at Gusev crater! " - Abdul Ahad [4th January, 2004]




A specially designed DVD carrying my electronic signature, along with the names of nearly 4 million other lucky participants in total, was attached to the Spirit rover prior to launch. This DVD is now set to rest in the wind blown Martian deserts for at least the next hundred years!

Here is an epic image of the DVD returned by NASA's Spirit rover on 4th January 2004, directly from the surface of Mars. This image was captured by the rover's navigation camera on "Sol 1" of its surface mission - the first full day on Mars.

A few weeks after Spirit the second MER vehicle, Opportunity, landed on the opposite side of Mars at a locale named "Meridiani Planum". Here is an early panoramic image, showing the Mars DVD of electronic signatures deployed by Opportunity's lander at Meridiani Planum. These images are courtesy of the The Planetary Society, who led the campaign with NASA to allow these DVDs to be included as part of the US government's Mars exploration program.

Close up view of hills to the east, seen from Spirit's landing site [Credit: JPL]
Above: Close up view of a section of the so-called "East Hills Complex" seen from Spirit's landing site [Credit: JPL]



Mission Background

My experience of the "defining" moment when Spirit first landed on Mars:

SUNDAY 4TH JANUARY 2004, 0720 GMT - Woke up to a very dull, grey, Sunday morning but I'm very excited: did this thing make it overnight...or was this another Beagle 2 type disaster job?!
Rushed downstairs to the TV room as quick as poss...

Sitting in front of the TV, I saw the whole NASA press conference aired via CNN live and direct from JPL. First black and white pictures from Spirit's nav cam flashed onto the screen at JPL's mission control room, showing parts of the spacecraft and a smooth, idyllic surrounding panorama within the dry lake bed of Gusev crater.

Here is a bit of background and commentary from the day before, only hours before Spirit - the first rover - was due to land at Gusev crater:-

SATURDAY, JANUARY 3, 2004 2120 GMT (4:20 p.m. EST)
"I think today is a great day to land on Mars!" says Mark Adler, the rover mission manager for cruise and entry, descent and landing (EDL).

"We launched on June 10th of last year, about seven months ago, out of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a Boeing Delta 2 rocket. That rocket threw us on a trajectory to go approximately to Mars. In that last seven months we have been flying the spacecraft, maintaining its health, maintaining its power and doing small maneuvers to guide the spacecraft exactly to the landing site at Gusev Crater," Adler told a pre-landing news conference a short time ago.

"We have, last night, completed conditioning of the lander batteries to prepare them for coming online for supporting the entry and power after that point in time.

"Right, now the spacecraft health is excellent. We have good attitude -- keeping the solar panels pointed at the Sun and the antennas pointed at Earth. We have good power through the solar panels, good communications at 120 bps.

"The spacecraft is in EDL mode. It is prepared to run EDL software when it encounters the atmosphere, it is prepared to do a turn before EDL, it is also prepared to turn on the inertial measurement units and the heaters for the gas generators for the entry event."

Spirit enters the atmosphere at 11:29 p.m. EST (0429 GMT) tonight. If all goes well, the rover will touch down in the Gusev Crater at 11:35 p.m. EST (0435 GMT).

But NASA officials continue to remind the press and public that landing a robotic spacecraft on another planet has the potential for failure.

"We need to remember this is just one more step in the process of accomplishing this mission -- landing on Mars today. But it is by far the riskiest step in the process and of course the one we are most concerned about," said Peter Theisinger, the Mars Exploration Rover project manager.

"We are 43 months from the start of the project, and the team has worked extremely difficult problems and worked extremely hard and intensively to get to this day."

NASA has spent over $800 million on Spirit and its twin, Opportunity, that arrives at Mars later this month.

Launch of Spirit rover

Launch of Spirit rover

Mars rover cruise stage (Mars-bound interplanetary transfer phase)

Gusev crater from Viking orbiter

Above: Gusev Crater is seen here in its geological context from NASA Viking images. [Credit: NASA/JPL] The geographical coordinates for the center of Spirit's landing ellipse target are 14.59 degrees south latitude and 175.3 degrees east longitude


I'm now feeling even more thrilled to have had my photo taken with a full scale replica of one of the Mars Exploration Rovers, when I visited KSC back in September 2003:-



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