Space

NASA's Spirit Starts Digging in the Martian Dirt

And will analyze some rocks that may be of volcanic origin

By Vlad Tarko, Senior Editor, Sci-Tech News

26th of April 2006, 09:26 GMT

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NASA's Spirit is now in a safe place for the winter receiving sufficient sunlight from its location on the Low Ridge Haven. The rover will spend the next eight months here and will start doing something new: digging. Although the two rovers had been on Mars for more than two years, none of them had the opportunity so far to do such an investigation. Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator for the rovers' science instruments at Washington University in St Louis explains: "We've never been able to do it before because of the urge to get to the next rock outcrop."

The rover landed on Mars on 3 January 2004 and has traveled 6.9 kilometers while investigating many sites. But now it has camped out on a northerly tilt hill slope and can concern itself with the in-depth analysis of a single location.

The rover will try to analyze the soil at various depths digging with a rock abrasion tool on its robotic arm. It will analyze the soil layer by layer, brushing away one after the other layers of dirt a few millimeters deep. Before actually starting the operation, the scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California will simulate the experiment on Earth.

The soil excavation will also provide valuable clues for the design of the future Phoenix Mars mission that is expected to land on the planet in May 2008. Phoenix Mars will be a stationary robot and will be specially designed to dig into the Martian soil and ice - even half a meter deep.

Besides digging into the soil, Spirit will also inspect the rocks nearby, some of which appear to be of volcanic origin - in the picture, they are the dark, spongy looking rocks. The thin, jagged rocks sticking out of the sand also look interesting.

Right now the rover is making a panoramic picture of the entire area photographing 15� at a time. The whole picture will be complete in about five to six weeks.

Picture Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

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