dailywireless.org » Mars Rovers: 5 Years On

Mars Rovers: 5 Years On

The Mars rovers are celebrating a remarkable five years on the Red Planet (video), notes the BBC.

The first robot, Spirit, landed on 3 January, 2004, followed by its twin, Opportunity, 21 days later.

It was hoped the robots would work for at least three months; but their longevity in the freezing Martian conditions has surprised everyone. Nasa lost contact with its more recent (but static) Phoenix lander in November (below).

The rovers’ data has revealed much about the history of water at Mars’ equator billions of years ago.

Together, the rovers have driven more than 20km, and returned more than 36 gigabytes of data. This has included a quarter of a million images.

Spirit is exploring a 150km-wide bowl-shaped depression known as Gusev Crater. It has found an abundance of rocks and soils bearing evidence of extensive exposure to water. Opportunity is on the other side of the planet, in a flat region known as Meridiani Planum. Some of the rocks seen by Opportunity were once “drenched” in water

The rovers are now showing some serious signs of wear and tear. Spirit has to drive backwards everywhere it goes because of a jammed wheel; and Opportunity’s robotic arm has a glitch in a shoulder joint because of a broken electrical wire.

November 20, 2008, marked the end of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s primary science phase. The orbiter, which also relayed pictures from the rovers, returned 73 terabits of science data, more than all earlier Mars missions combined. NASA killed the 2009 Mars probe launch. The mission was supposed to send a new rover to Mars in October 2009 to study the planet’s environmental history and determine if conditions are, or ever were, able to support life. Officials cited cost concerns.

In 2011, a more capable Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) will be launched.

The Mars Phoenix Lander was launched on 4 August 2007 from Cape Canaveral and landed on Mars in May, 2008. A Mars trip takes 10 months. The Mars Lander surpassed its original three-month mission, lasting five months. The HiRISE camera, on board Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, photographed possible landing sites. It was designed to study the surface and near-surface environment of a landing site in the high northern area of Mars. The primary science objectives were to; determine polar climate and weather, study interaction with the surface, and composition of the lower atmosphere around 70 degrees north for at least 90 sols.

The static Phoenix Lander, which touched down on 25 May of 2008, is supported on three static landing legs (no wheels). The science experiments and a robotic arm are mounted on the base. Communication was primarily through a UHF relay via the Mars 2001 Odyssey orbiter, but Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Express can also be used as relays. The (very) static Phoenix also has a steerable medium gain X-band antenna to provide communications directly with Earth.

If the Phoenix Lander comes back to life on Mars, Twitter users could be among the first to know. NASA added a Twitter page, enabling the robotic interplanetary explorer to answer the hot micro-blogging website’s trademark query: “What are you doing?” Here’s its twitter feed.

Both Mars Express and the Mars rovers use the same communication protocol. This protocol, called Proximity-1, was developed by the international Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems, an international partnership for standardizing techniques for handling space data. CCSDS provides a forum for discussion of common problems of space data systems. Some 346 missions utilize the protocol.