Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet

Steven W. Squyres

Roving Mars: Spirit, Opportunity and the Exploration of the Red Planet

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Reception begins at 5:30 p.m.

The Talk begins at 6:00 p.m.

Seating is limited, call 850-202-4462 or RSVP to reception@ihmc.us if you are planning to attend.

Institute for Human & Machine Cognition, 40 S. Alcaniz St., Pensacola

http://www.ihmc.us (http://www.ihmc.us/)

Steven W. Squyres is a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., and the principal investigator for the science payload on NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers. Squyres has participated in a number of planetary spaceflight missions. From 1978 to 1981 he was an associate of the Voyager imaging science team, participating in analysis of imaging data from the encounters with Jupiter and Saturn. He was a radar investigator on the Magellan mission to Venus, a member of the Mars Observer gamma-ray spectrometer flight investigation team, and a co-investigator on the Russian Mars ’96 mission. He is a member of the imaging science team on the Cassini mission to Saturn and was a member of the gamma-ray X-ray spectrometer team on NASA’s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell in 1981.

In January of 2004, twin robotic explorers named Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars. Expected to last for 90 days, their mission has now gone on for more than eight years. Its objective is to search for evidence of past water on Mars, and to determine if Mars ever had conditions that would have been suitable for life.

Spirit landed in Gusev Crater, a large impact crater in the southern highlands of Mars. Finding only ancient lava on the crater floor, Spirit drove a mile and a half to the base of the Columbia Hills, a mountain range near the landing site. There Spirit ascended Husband Hill, the highest summit in the range, finding evidence that the rocks were modified long ago by water. Later, Spirit found strong evidence for ancient hot springs on Mars. Spirit’s mission ended after six years on the martian surface.

Opportunity landed on Meridiani Planum, a smooth plateau near the martian equator. In the first few weeks after landing, Opportunity found compelling evidence for long-ago water on Mars. This evidence included thick deposits of sulfate salts, concretions that precipitated from liquid water, and rocks that preserve ancient ripples formed when water flowed over sand. Opportunity has driven more than twenty miles across the martian surface, and has been exploring Endeavour Crater, a spectacular impact crater fifteen miles in diameter.

To develop Spirit and Opportunity, a team of more than 4,000 highly motivated engineers and scientists overcame a host of technical challenges. The challenges were multiplied by an extraordinarily tight schedule that was driven by the motions of the planets. The talk will provide an up-to-date summary of the missions of Spirit and Opportunity, from their initial conception through their development, launch, landing, and operations on the surface of Mars.