LECTURE REVIEW
Spirit and Opportunity's
Excellent Adventure in Mars Geology
By Grant Hovey
The exploration of Mars gained a whole new dimension November 2, 2005, when Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist Joy A. Crisp reviewed the accomplishments of the intrepid robots, Spirit and Opportunity, before an enthusiastic audience at a packed Beckman auditorium, on the Caltech campus.
Although the rovers had a life expectancy of 90 days, Dr. Crisp announced that Spirit now has been operating for 652 days. Here at last, after nearly two years of brief and occasional television clips, Internet visits, and newspaper articles, the audience, vicarious Martian explorers all, had a focal point. And they broke into spontaneous applause.
Nearly one-half of the copious number of slides were in 3-D. To facilitate viewing, a pair of the familiar blue/red glasses were enclosed in each program. Not only did the appreciative audience get to cheer the longevity of the rovers, they got to salute the fascinating images as well.
The Spirit rover traversed freely on Mars. Upon arrival, its stereoscopic cameras fixed on a feature on the distant horizon, Columbia Hill. With only 90 days of life, such a journey was nearly impossible.
Despite the poor odds, the unstoppable Spirit headed for the hills, but never missed a chance to burr into the innards of an interesting looking rock, or peer into and crawl inside an inviting crater.
Eventually, Spirit reached the base of Columbia Hill, which consists of several peaks. One, Husband Hill, looked the most climbable. So up it went, and like any tourist, took pictures as it neared the summit. At last, Spirit reached the top of Husband Hill and looked down on the other side to see a large unexplored area, Tennessee Valley. The plain below revealed a white, roughly pentagonal shape soon given a folksy nickname: home plate.
From this vantage point, Spirit beheld something never before seen on any other planet: movement. Dust devils whisked their way in unison across an open plain. But Martian winds did more than create and move these funnel-shaped clouds of dust. The rover's months-old solar panels had been blown clean, and were eagerly converting the dim sunlight into electricity.
Opportunity, Spirit's twin, took full advantage of the circumstances. Fortuitously, this rover bounced upon landing into the middle of a crater. JPL scientists and engineers were as excited as a duffer scoring a hole-in-one. Eagle Crater exposed an outcropping of bedrock. Spirit pounced on this feature like Champollion deciphering the Rosetta Stone.
After leaving Eagle Crater, Opportunity encountered the last thing wanted on a geological expedition: the rover became stuck. The otherwise cool JPL team had a few scary moments before extracting the rover, and with a nod to our religious past nicknamed the area Purgatory.
Spirit and Opportunity discovered indications of past liquid water and the possibility of past or present life forms nearly everywhere they went. Dr. Crisp carefully explained that bodies of water formed hematite, peppercorn-sized sphericals, and rock layers. This water could have been the medium for simple, but self-replicating, cells.
The Herculean effort on the part of many scientists worldwide to find life on Mars has many implications, some not so obvious. The great argument that began with Darwin in the 19th Century between religion and science rages on. If life arose on remote Mars, then it may well could have come into being on Earth by itself.
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