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Mission to Mars: Exploring the Red Planet

Aired January 05, 2004 - 15:07   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.


KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: And now to a project that's truly out of this world. NASA scientists tickled pink with the picture of Mars they're getting from the Spirit rover. The robot explorer landed Saturday night and got right to work beaming images home for the family album.
Our own Miles O'Brien, he is in those pictures. He is in Pasadena, California, keeping up with the mission, of course.

Hi -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Kyra. How are you?

You know I've been watching Jeff Flock all day at the auto show and getting a little bit jealous. So I thought I would take an opportunity to check out this $400 million baby with six wheel drive, the Spirit rover, full-scale model. This is the exact size of the one that's on Mars.

Joining me to talk a little bit about how it works is Matt Golombeck who is the scientist who was instrumental in deciding where Spirit landed in the Gusev Crater.

Matt, good to have you with us. First of all, explain this configuration as we have it right now.

MATT GOLOMBECK, "SPIRIT" SCIENTIST: OK. It's in a partially folded up configuration here. The solar panels are folded so that it can fit into the tetrahedron. And basically these things unfold. That's what it did on the first solve (ph).

O'BRIEN: And that went off without a hitch. These are the solar panels. So this is where it provides the juice to keep it going. We're told these are working at about 83 percent of capacity. Why do you suppose that is?

GOLOMBECK: We have pretty good indications that the atmosphere is dusty. It looks like the dust in the atmosphere is reducing the amount of sunlight that's hitting the panels and reducing the energy somewhat.

O'BRIEN: Is that going to be a problem?

GOLOMBECK: Not initially, no, yes.

O'BRIEN: Now this is the -- this was the other big event that occurred, right? GOLOMBECK: This is the hand cam mast assembly...

O'BRIEN: All right.

GOLOMBECK: ... which rotates up like this so it fits in the right configuration. And it actually locks into place. There we go. And on top here are the cameras, the outside of the pan cams, panoramic cameras, and the inside of the navigation cameras. And coming out the opposite side is a little slit there and that's the mini test, the mini thermal emission spectrometer.

O'BRIEN: It's just about eye level to us. So when you say this is a robotic field geologist, it is in every respect.

GOLOMBECK: It's just the right size. It's my size. Just the right field geologist size.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about this five -- is it five degrees of freedom arm?

GOLOMBECK: It's eight, actually.

O'BRIEN: Eight (INAUDIBLE). How does it work?

GOLOMBECK: But, yes, it's the same as your arm, basically. Well all the same. It's normally stowed up underneath or next to the rover. It then can rotate out. You get stereo images from these two hazard cameras. Haz cams, as we call them. And this thing can rotate out.

And it has an actuator at the end that allows four instruments to be placed up against a rock. The one on the end here is what we call the RAT, that's the rock abrasion tool. That will grind off a few millimeters of the outer weathering rind of a rock. And over on this side is the microscopic imager. You see this little post that keeps it at just the right distance from the rock. And then the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer gives you the chemistry of the rock and the Mossbauer Spectrometer gives you the iron bearing mineralogy of the rock.

O'BRIEN: So really a pretty impressive suite of instruments in a very small place?

GOLOMBECK: Yes. And in fact that's better than me, because I don't carry those around in the field.

O'BRIEN: Pretty soon it will be on its way. Right now it's staying on its pedestal and off to the races it goes. First good rock it sees, I'm sure we'll hear some good things about it.

GOLOMBECK: Absolutely, yes. We have looking in store a full, a piece of a panorama that should come down today, as well as part of the mini test. And that will be crucial information for understanding the mineralogy of the site we've come to rest on.

O'BRIEN: Matt Golombeck, one of the chief scientists here on the Spirit, as well as Opportunity mission, which Opportunity is set to land on January 24 on the other side of Mars -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Miles, I think that vehicle might be just a little more expensive than what Jeff Flock was talking about at the Detroit Auto Show.

O'BRIEN: Well at two inches per second, the pickup really isn't going to do much, is it? You know. But, hey, it's good enough for Mars, right?

PHILLIPS: There you go. Miles, thank you.

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 5, 2004 - 15:07   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: And now to a project that's truly out of this world. NASA scientists tickled pink with the picture of Mars they're getting from the Spirit rover. The robot explorer landed Saturday night and got right to work beaming images home for the family album.
Our own Miles O'Brien, he is in those pictures. He is in Pasadena, California, keeping up with the mission, of course.

Hi -- Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Kyra. How are you?

You know I've been watching Jeff Flock all day at the auto show and getting a little bit jealous. So I thought I would take an opportunity to check out this $400 million baby with six wheel drive, the Spirit rover, full-scale model. This is the exact size of the one that's on Mars.

Joining me to talk a little bit about how it works is Matt Golombeck who is the scientist who was instrumental in deciding where Spirit landed in the Gusev Crater.

Matt, good to have you with us. First of all, explain this configuration as we have it right now.

MATT GOLOMBECK, "SPIRIT" SCIENTIST: OK. It's in a partially folded up configuration here. The solar panels are folded so that it can fit into the tetrahedron. And basically these things unfold. That's what it did on the first solve (ph).

O'BRIEN: And that went off without a hitch. These are the solar panels. So this is where it provides the juice to keep it going. We're told these are working at about 83 percent of capacity. Why do you suppose that is?

GOLOMBECK: We have pretty good indications that the atmosphere is dusty. It looks like the dust in the atmosphere is reducing the amount of sunlight that's hitting the panels and reducing the energy somewhat.

O'BRIEN: Is that going to be a problem?

GOLOMBECK: Not initially, no, yes.

O'BRIEN: Now this is the -- this was the other big event that occurred, right? GOLOMBECK: This is the hand cam mast assembly...

O'BRIEN: All right.

GOLOMBECK: ... which rotates up like this so it fits in the right configuration. And it actually locks into place. There we go. And on top here are the cameras, the outside of the pan cams, panoramic cameras, and the inside of the navigation cameras. And coming out the opposite side is a little slit there and that's the mini test, the mini thermal emission spectrometer.

O'BRIEN: It's just about eye level to us. So when you say this is a robotic field geologist, it is in every respect.

GOLOMBECK: It's just the right size. It's my size. Just the right field geologist size.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about this five -- is it five degrees of freedom arm?

GOLOMBECK: It's eight, actually.

O'BRIEN: Eight (INAUDIBLE). How does it work?

GOLOMBECK: But, yes, it's the same as your arm, basically. Well all the same. It's normally stowed up underneath or next to the rover. It then can rotate out. You get stereo images from these two hazard cameras. Haz cams, as we call them. And this thing can rotate out.

And it has an actuator at the end that allows four instruments to be placed up against a rock. The one on the end here is what we call the RAT, that's the rock abrasion tool. That will grind off a few millimeters of the outer weathering rind of a rock. And over on this side is the microscopic imager. You see this little post that keeps it at just the right distance from the rock. And then the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer gives you the chemistry of the rock and the Mossbauer Spectrometer gives you the iron bearing mineralogy of the rock.

O'BRIEN: So really a pretty impressive suite of instruments in a very small place?

GOLOMBECK: Yes. And in fact that's better than me, because I don't carry those around in the field.

O'BRIEN: Pretty soon it will be on its way. Right now it's staying on its pedestal and off to the races it goes. First good rock it sees, I'm sure we'll hear some good things about it.

GOLOMBECK: Absolutely, yes. We have looking in store a full, a piece of a panorama that should come down today, as well as part of the mini test. And that will be crucial information for understanding the mineralogy of the site we've come to rest on.

O'BRIEN: Matt Golombeck, one of the chief scientists here on the Spirit, as well as Opportunity mission, which Opportunity is set to land on January 24 on the other side of Mars -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Miles, I think that vehicle might be just a little more expensive than what Jeff Flock was talking about at the Detroit Auto Show.

O'BRIEN: Well at two inches per second, the pickup really isn't going to do much, is it? You know. But, hey, it's good enough for Mars, right?

PHILLIPS: There you go. Miles, thank you.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com