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Postcard From Mars

Aired January 06, 2004 - 15:09   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.


MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: It's not the kind of snapshot you would find at a Kodak photo show, but the new color picture of Mars is generating a lot of excitement. After all, it was shot by a robot with 20/20 vision more than 100 million miles away.
Our space correspondent, Miles O'Brien, is in Pasadena, California, with a taste of what's to come.

Hello, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Marty, this is the camera on top of the Spirit rover. It's called the pan cam, for I guess, obvious reasons. It pans around.

And what makes it such an eagle-eyed photo gatherer is, it has a stereoscopic capability, two lenses trained at any given moment, which gives scientists 3-D capability and the ability to range-find, which is really crucial, because that will tell them where to start motoring when the opportunity comes up.

Look at these images. No one has ever seen anything like this. So you might as well savor the moment, a little piece of history, Earth history and Mars history, as we take a look at these images that have come in from more than 100 million miles across the void. Some of the engineers working on this are still on cloud nine.

Julie Townsend is among them. She joins us now to talk a little bit about what it's like to be in the control room when, line by line, suddenly an image like that pops up on the screen.

Julie, it's got to be a bit of euphoria.

JULIE TOWNSEND, A MISSION AVIONICS ENGINEER: Oh, definitely. Euphoria is definitely a good word for it.

O'BRIEN: And when people see it, are they going to go, wow, look at this, look at that? Are there specific things they are looking at that have really struck them as being unusual?

TOWNSEND: Well, I think the color makes a lot of things stand out more in this image than they did in the black-and-white images that we got back at first. We can definitely see more of the small rocks against the red of the soil. That air bag impression in the soil definitely stands out very much as a different color than the soil around it.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about that air bag impression. Right here, as a matter of fact, is the image. And this image is very close to the base of the Spirit rover, which is in the midst of this goose-egg crater which might or might not be a dry lake bed. Now, if you take a look at this area here, first of all, just to give you a sense of it, the air bags were deployed this way across the screen towards the rover.

And as they went across these rocks, they kind of scraped things up here. And what's interesting is this area right in here. Julie, what is it about that spot, that scraped-up area, that has scientists kind of interested?

TOWNSEND: Well, you can see near the middle of that circle that the color has kind of changed. And it looks like a piece of the soil has been actually pulled away by the scraping of the air bags. The scientists find that very interesting. It looks like the soil has a different consistency than they might have expected.

O'BRIEN: It almost looks like clay or mud. Of course, that's impossible on bone-dry Mars. But, nevertheless, it's something that I'm sure they will be looking very closely at.

Let's take a look. And you've seen these pictures of the control room and the euphoria that was there on landing night. Have you been able to sustain that level of interest there or is it getting ho-hum there yet?

TOWNSEND: Oh, there's nothing ho-hum about this.

We're all just so excited to be on Mars, that we're being so successful, working through every little difficulty, everything that's not quite as we expected. We're having a great day every day.

O'BRIEN: All right.

And a phone call today, this morning, came from the president of the United States to the head, the director of the laboratory here, the Jet Propulsion Lab, Charles Elachi, President Bush telling him he's enjoying the pictures as well and hats off to the team, well earned. It's nice to know that, even in the Oval Office, they're watching these wonderful images.

TOWNSEND: Yes, isn't that grand? It was great to have the president of the United States call us up, tell us that we did a great job, tell us how excited he is about what we're doing.

O'BRIEN: All right, keep up the good work, Julie, you and the rest of the team. And we'll see more pictures these pictures as they stream down from space -- Martin.

SAVIDGE: Miles O'Brien, it is fascinating stuff to watch. 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 6, 2004 - 15:09   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: It's not the kind of snapshot you would find at a Kodak photo show, but the new color picture of Mars is generating a lot of excitement. After all, it was shot by a robot with 20/20 vision more than 100 million miles away.
Our space correspondent, Miles O'Brien, is in Pasadena, California, with a taste of what's to come.

Hello, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN SPACE CORRESPONDENT: Marty, this is the camera on top of the Spirit rover. It's called the pan cam, for I guess, obvious reasons. It pans around.

And what makes it such an eagle-eyed photo gatherer is, it has a stereoscopic capability, two lenses trained at any given moment, which gives scientists 3-D capability and the ability to range-find, which is really crucial, because that will tell them where to start motoring when the opportunity comes up.

Look at these images. No one has ever seen anything like this. So you might as well savor the moment, a little piece of history, Earth history and Mars history, as we take a look at these images that have come in from more than 100 million miles across the void. Some of the engineers working on this are still on cloud nine.

Julie Townsend is among them. She joins us now to talk a little bit about what it's like to be in the control room when, line by line, suddenly an image like that pops up on the screen.

Julie, it's got to be a bit of euphoria.

JULIE TOWNSEND, A MISSION AVIONICS ENGINEER: Oh, definitely. Euphoria is definitely a good word for it.

O'BRIEN: And when people see it, are they going to go, wow, look at this, look at that? Are there specific things they are looking at that have really struck them as being unusual?

TOWNSEND: Well, I think the color makes a lot of things stand out more in this image than they did in the black-and-white images that we got back at first. We can definitely see more of the small rocks against the red of the soil. That air bag impression in the soil definitely stands out very much as a different color than the soil around it.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about that air bag impression. Right here, as a matter of fact, is the image. And this image is very close to the base of the Spirit rover, which is in the midst of this goose-egg crater which might or might not be a dry lake bed. Now, if you take a look at this area here, first of all, just to give you a sense of it, the air bags were deployed this way across the screen towards the rover.

And as they went across these rocks, they kind of scraped things up here. And what's interesting is this area right in here. Julie, what is it about that spot, that scraped-up area, that has scientists kind of interested?

TOWNSEND: Well, you can see near the middle of that circle that the color has kind of changed. And it looks like a piece of the soil has been actually pulled away by the scraping of the air bags. The scientists find that very interesting. It looks like the soil has a different consistency than they might have expected.

O'BRIEN: It almost looks like clay or mud. Of course, that's impossible on bone-dry Mars. But, nevertheless, it's something that I'm sure they will be looking very closely at.

Let's take a look. And you've seen these pictures of the control room and the euphoria that was there on landing night. Have you been able to sustain that level of interest there or is it getting ho-hum there yet?

TOWNSEND: Oh, there's nothing ho-hum about this.

We're all just so excited to be on Mars, that we're being so successful, working through every little difficulty, everything that's not quite as we expected. We're having a great day every day.

O'BRIEN: All right.

And a phone call today, this morning, came from the president of the United States to the head, the director of the laboratory here, the Jet Propulsion Lab, Charles Elachi, President Bush telling him he's enjoying the pictures as well and hats off to the team, well earned. It's nice to know that, even in the Oval Office, they're watching these wonderful images.

TOWNSEND: Yes, isn't that grand? It was great to have the president of the United States call us up, tell us that we did a great job, tell us how excited he is about what we're doing.

O'BRIEN: All right, keep up the good work, Julie, you and the rest of the team. And we'll see more pictures these pictures as they stream down from space -- Martin.

SAVIDGE: Miles O'Brien, it is fascinating stuff to watch. 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