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New Lives on Old Planet

A NASA rover called Spirit made a perfect landing in an ancient lakebed on Mars early on Sunday morning, after a suspenseful entry sequence that worked far beyond anyone's expectations.

Elated scientists and engineers repeatedly erupted into cheers, jumped in the air and gave each other hugs at the mission control centre at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The Mars rover mission's chief scientist, Steven Squyres of Cornell University, said: "In none of our rehearsals did it go this well."

The airbag-protected Lander continued to transmit data almost without interruption throughout an entry and landing sequence the mission team had dubbed "six minutes from hell". Furthermore, the four-sided craft even landed with its base-side down, greatly simplifying the process of unfolding its petals to release the golf-cart-sized roving robot.

After the craft opened, it deployed a camera mast and relayed back dozens of high-resolution images. These provide a complete panorama of the rock-strewn landing site and were transmitted in only 12 minutes, just before the sun set on Mars.

Spirit is the first of two NASA rovers, with the second due to land in a few week's time. The success is a boost to those pursuing the exploration of Mars, following the failure to contact the European Space Agency's lander Beagle 2 and the generally poor record of Mars lander missions.

Constant communication

The ill-fated 1998 Mars Polar Lander and Mars Observer missions led NASA to make many changes, including the constant stream of data sent back by Spirit during entry and landing. The lack of such data made it impossible to be sure of the cause of the 1998 failures.

Spirit therefore sent back signals during every phase of the process, providing instant confirmation at mission control of each of the critical events. These were deployment of the lander from its carrier craft, entry into the atmosphere, deployment of the parachute, jettisoning of the heat shield, radar scans of the ground below, firing of retro rockets to slow the descent, and inflation of the cushioning airbags.

However, there then followed more than 10 minutes of stomach- churning suspense as the radio signals vanished while the craft was bouncing across the surface.

This was worrying because during the very similar landing process of Mars Pathfinder in 1996, there had been good radio contact during the bouncing phase. But jubilation broke out again in mission control as a stream of data suddenly poured in from the safely-landed craft.

One late addition to the craft's design may have made a crucial difference in the mission's success: steering rockets designed to compensate for strong winds during the descent. Data showed that the rockets did fire, indicating that the wind may have been strong enough to cause a landing failure without those rockets.


Sweet spot

Mission planners had expected it would take at least three days to determine exactly where spirit landed. But the bonanza of data already received include images taken during the descent that make it possible to pinpoint the location to within about a kilometer.

The point appears to be about 10 kilometers east of the centre of the landing ellipse. Squyres had in fact picked this exact spot a few weeks ago as the ideal "sweet spot" for landing, because it appears to have been swept clean of dust, making it easier to study the rocks. "The location looks like it was tailor-made for our vehicle," he said.

Jennifer Trosper, the manager for surface operations, said the pictures show that it should be much easier to drive the rover off the lander's ramp than in most of the team's practice sessions.

But she said it is odd that the largest rock in the scene, about 75 centimeters across, is right next to the lander's ramp. "It may be that we rolled up against it." However, it will not pose any problem, at most requiring the rover to turn slightly before rolling off.

Mission controllers expect it to take about a week to get the rover fully deployed onto the surface to begin a planned three months of exploration and geological research.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Spirit Rover in honor of the astronauts who died in the tragic accident of the Space Shuttle Columbia in February. The area in the vast flatland of the Gusev Crater where Spirit landed this weekend will be called the Columbia Memorial Station.

Since its historic landing, Spirit has been sending extraordinary images of its new surroundings on the red planet over the past few days. Among them, an image of a memorial plaque placed on the spacecraft to Columbia's astronauts and the STS-107 mission.

The plaque is mounted on the back of Spirit's high-gain antenna, a disc-shaped tool used for communicating directly with Earth. The plaque is aluminum and approximately six inches in diameter. The memorial plaque was attached March 28, 2003, at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy
Space Center, Fla. Chris Voorhees and Peter Illsley, Mars Exploration Rover engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., designed the plaque.

"During this time of great joy for NASA, the Mars Exploration Rover team and the entire NASA family paused to remember our lost colleagues from the Columbia mission. To venture into space, into the unknown, is a calling heard by the bravest, most dedicated individuals," said NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe. "As team members gazed at Mars through Spirit's eyes, the Columbia memorial appeared in images returned to Earth, a fitting tribute to their own spirit and dedication. Spirit carries the dream of exploration the brave astronauts of
Columbia held in their hearts."

Spirit successfully landed on Mars Jan. 3. It will spend the next three months exploring the barren landscape to determine if Mars was ever watery and suitable to sustain life. Spirit's twin, Opportunity, will reach Mars on Jan. 25 to begin a
similar examination of a site on the opposite side of the planet.

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