We were fearful for a time that the motor may have failed permanently. If that were the case, we'd never be able to use the arm again. |
We'll be busy here for a long time. |
We're also really getting the hang of driving in this terrain. |
We're in a drive-or-die situation. |
We're just waiting. We're just in awe of what we're seeing and we're just waiting to see the whole thing so we can really get about the business of deciding what to do. |
We're not going to take any risks. It's a big crater in terms of diameter, but really shallow. It's nothing like Endurance. |
We're there, for all intents and purposes. |
We're using the same landing technique that Pathfinder used. |
We've been very curious to figure out what they are. |
We've got some evidence, I think, of water flowing through the rocks, and changes in chemistry, I don't think we have what any of us would consider compelling evidence for surface water yet. |
What field geologists typically do - and Spirit is a robotic field geologist - is you climb to the top of the nearest hill and take a look around so you get the lay of the land and figure out where you want to go, |
What we have found once we've gotten up into the summit region...the driving has gotten very, very good. The ground is hard here. There is not a lot of fine-grain stuff around. What there is piled up in drifts. This is because the summit region is exposed to the wind; it's very windy. In some parts of the summit region, we barely leave tracks. |
When we first touched down at Gusev Crater on the night of January 4, 2004, the Columbia Hills seemed impossibly far away. It was a necessary place for us to get to, though, because as we looked across the plains we quickly realized these plains were made of basaltic lava. This was stuff that was interesting but did not tell us what we really sought to know about Gusev Crater, and that is whether there had been water here. So in order to find something, in order to find something different, we had to make that mile-and-a-half drive. |
Wind has to be involved at some level you figure. Frost might have helped. A frost build-up on arrays could coagulate the dust...but the fact is that we don't understand it very well. But I'll take it. |
With respect to how long it's going to take us to get down the hill, we don't have a whole lot of experience driving this vehicle downhill -- we've been going uphill for more than a year now. We're going to have to take it carefully at first and learn as we go. I think the deciding factor is going to be how good the geology is. If we're finding geology that offers truly compelling targets (for study) as we found on the way up, then our pace is going to be a lot slower whereas if it's a lot of loose sand and that sort of thing we'll be able to move through it a lot more briskly and head to the good stuff off in the distance. |