If you had clear skies last night, the gorgeousity of the Moon and Mars probably greeted you as you stepped outside and looked up. It’s tough to take an image of such a sight — but I gave it the old college try anyway, using my Canon Vixia HD video camera. This is the result. Of course, the Moon was so much brighter than Mars that I expected it would wash out the scene and I’d miss Mars completely. In the real sky, the Moon was bright and Mars was a little red dot next to it. I messed with my settings a bit and snapped this view. Mars shows up as a little red disk next to the Moon (which really doesn’t have rays).
Did you go out to see Mars last night? Or Jupiter in the west (not long after sunset)? Will you go out tonight? If you do, check out Mars: a world where our robot explorers are still roaming about and/or returning good science to teach us more about this desolate red world.
What’s a planetary scientist to do when a rover gets stuck in the sand after six years of exploration, is still working well, but can’t move anymore? You turn it into a stationary research platform. NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has ended six years of roving in a sand pit and will now become a fixed science platform. After it works itself into position to survive the Martian winter so that it can get more sunlight on its solar panels, the rover will ride out the severe weather and begin doing a class of science that can only be done by a freestanding set of instruments.
For example, Spirit is already studying tiny wobbles in the rotation of Mars over time. This allows scientists some valuable insight about the composition of the planet’s core. It’s not something that can be done overnight — it requires months of radio-tracking the motion of a point on the surface of Mars to calculate long-term motion with an accuracy of a few inches. And, since Spirit is now a “point” on the surface, it’s in a perfect position to do this work. If Spirit continues working, it will help determine whether the core of Mars is liquid or solid — a question that is still unanswered.
Tools on the rover’s robotic arm can also study variations in the composition of nearby soil, which has been affected by water. And, as we do hear on Earth with fixed weather stations, the Spirit rover can monitor the weather and watch how the constant Martian winds move soil across the surface.
I think it’s a wonderful chapter in the rover’s life, which has been longer than anybody expected. It’s also a tribute to the folks at Jet Propulsion Laboratory who built it and continued to guide the rover around the planet until Spirit got stuck in a sandpit last year. A perfect example of making the best of what could have been a truly bad situation and coming out ahead!
