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CNN Live At Daybreak
Rover on a Roll
Aired January 15, 2004 - 06:39 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Certainly NASA is plenty proud of its red rover this morning. The Spirit rover successfully rolled onto the surface of Mars. You heard it here live on CNN, oh, just about 30 minutes ago.
Our space correspondent, Miles O'Brien, joins us live from Washington.
Boy, were they excited? They broke out the champagne.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: The second time they've done that, Carol. Twelve days ago, of course, on landing they broke out the champagne. This was the next big milestone.
It took them awhile to get off of that landing pad -- about 12 days. But you don't want to do things too quickly when you've got a $400 million rover up there, and any wrong move can be a big problem. Of course, with the distance, too, it's kind of hard to fix it, isn't it?
It's moved all of 10 feet, and these are pictures, which came back from Spirit as it went down its ramp there on its landing pad. It had to go in a slightly different direction. You'll recall one of the air bags didn't deploy -- or, I should say, stow -- as it should have. And so, they had to sort of re-jigger the course of action.
There you see it looking back at the landing pad, indicating that it is, in fact, six wheels on the surface and off to the races -- if you call two inches a second off to the races.
In any case, the scene in the control room was sort of a repeat of what happened on January 4, when everything went so well for Spirit. The word came back, the images and the team that has worked so hard on this celebrating yet another success, ready to pop that bubbly.
The head of the scientific mission on the surface is Jennifer Trosper. Let's listen to her.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER TROSPER, NASA MISSION MANAGER: Now, we are the mission that we all envisioned three and a half years ago, and that is very exciting. And so, I think on this occasion I would like to make a toast to the thing that makes this all possible, and it is all of the people in this room who are on the team and all of the people who aren't in this room who are on the team that contributed to getting us to six wheels on Mars, and your efforts are historical. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Hear, hear! It might seem like a little early for champagne, but they're, of course, on the Martian day. It was the end of their day, Carol.
Now, we're going to watch Spirit slowly crawl across the surface, headed for a crater, which is of great interest to scientists. These impact craters are good, because they kind of kick up a lot of interesting rocks. The hope is they'll find a rock there that either has some telltale indications that it was formed in the presence of water, or who knows? They might get lucky -- and they've got a microscope on there -- and they'll see fossilized eyes looking right back at them.
COSTELLO: Oh, that's just...
O'BRIEN: Wouldnt that be cool?
COSTELLO: That would be awesome!
O'BRIEN: Yes.
COSTELLO: That's just amazing that that thing can do that. It has a microscope on board, and they can actually study the images back on earth.
O'BRIEN: Exactly. It's the first time that anything like that has been sent onto Mars. The Viking landers did not have a little microscope that could actually, you know, zoom in.
So, this rover is really a fairly sophisticated field geologist. As a matter of fact, what a field geologist would tell you is, when I go out in the field, I don't carry as much gear as this rover does, because it has all of these spectrometers in there that can actually analyze the rocks right there in place and tell you one way or another if that rock ever had any contact with water.
You know, the rocks have stories to tell you. You just have to know how to root them out.
COSTELLO: Awesome. All right, Miles, I know you have a busy day ahead. We'll let you go. Miles O'Brien live from Washington this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired January 15, 2004 - 06:39 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Certainly NASA is plenty proud of its red rover this morning. The Spirit rover successfully rolled onto the surface of Mars. You heard it here live on CNN, oh, just about 30 minutes ago.
Our space correspondent, Miles O'Brien, joins us live from Washington.
Boy, were they excited? They broke out the champagne.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: The second time they've done that, Carol. Twelve days ago, of course, on landing they broke out the champagne. This was the next big milestone.
It took them awhile to get off of that landing pad -- about 12 days. But you don't want to do things too quickly when you've got a $400 million rover up there, and any wrong move can be a big problem. Of course, with the distance, too, it's kind of hard to fix it, isn't it?
It's moved all of 10 feet, and these are pictures, which came back from Spirit as it went down its ramp there on its landing pad. It had to go in a slightly different direction. You'll recall one of the air bags didn't deploy -- or, I should say, stow -- as it should have. And so, they had to sort of re-jigger the course of action.
There you see it looking back at the landing pad, indicating that it is, in fact, six wheels on the surface and off to the races -- if you call two inches a second off to the races.
In any case, the scene in the control room was sort of a repeat of what happened on January 4, when everything went so well for Spirit. The word came back, the images and the team that has worked so hard on this celebrating yet another success, ready to pop that bubbly.
The head of the scientific mission on the surface is Jennifer Trosper. Let's listen to her.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENNIFER TROSPER, NASA MISSION MANAGER: Now, we are the mission that we all envisioned three and a half years ago, and that is very exciting. And so, I think on this occasion I would like to make a toast to the thing that makes this all possible, and it is all of the people in this room who are on the team and all of the people who aren't in this room who are on the team that contributed to getting us to six wheels on Mars, and your efforts are historical. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'BRIEN: Hear, hear! It might seem like a little early for champagne, but they're, of course, on the Martian day. It was the end of their day, Carol.
Now, we're going to watch Spirit slowly crawl across the surface, headed for a crater, which is of great interest to scientists. These impact craters are good, because they kind of kick up a lot of interesting rocks. The hope is they'll find a rock there that either has some telltale indications that it was formed in the presence of water, or who knows? They might get lucky -- and they've got a microscope on there -- and they'll see fossilized eyes looking right back at them.
COSTELLO: Oh, that's just...
O'BRIEN: Wouldnt that be cool?
COSTELLO: That would be awesome!
O'BRIEN: Yes.
COSTELLO: That's just amazing that that thing can do that. It has a microscope on board, and they can actually study the images back on earth.
O'BRIEN: Exactly. It's the first time that anything like that has been sent onto Mars. The Viking landers did not have a little microscope that could actually, you know, zoom in.
So, this rover is really a fairly sophisticated field geologist. As a matter of fact, what a field geologist would tell you is, when I go out in the field, I don't carry as much gear as this rover does, because it has all of these spectrometers in there that can actually analyze the rocks right there in place and tell you one way or another if that rock ever had any contact with water.
You know, the rocks have stories to tell you. You just have to know how to root them out.
COSTELLO: Awesome. All right, Miles, I know you have a busy day ahead. We'll let you go. Miles O'Brien live from Washington this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
