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The 4 February the robotic explorer Spirit rose up to its first full day on Mars on Sunday, hours after making a perilous landing, sending postcards to Earth and taking a much deserved snooze (referred from the news article by Richard Stenger, CNN, Sunday, 4 January 2004).
The $400 million NASA craft, the first to land without disaster on the red planet since 1997, probably woke up around 5:30 p.m. ET Sunday. The six-wheeled robot ship, crammed with high-tech cameras and geology instruments, is expected to begin roaming the surface in a week or so, after it has a chance to stretch, stand up and settle into its new environment.
NASA lost a Martian lander in 1999. Within hours of touchdown, Spirit beamed back images from its new home, stunning black and white snapshots that elicited excited shouts from mission controllers. Its mobile geologic studies are expected to last at least 90 days. It may send its first color images back Sunday night.
During the descent, Spirit deployed parachutes and fired retrorockets to decelerate. Seconds before impact, it inflated a protective cocoon of airbags. Everything went as planned.
View of Mars: Spirit and Opportunity have much more mobility and capability than the most recent successful visitor to Mars. The 1997 Pathfinder mission included a lander, which beamed back thousands of images, and Sojourner, a toy-sized test rover that scurried around the rocks and boulders littering the landing site.
Stein Morten Lund, 9 January 2004
Additional information
Read more about the expedition on NASA`s and CNN`s websites.
CNN-link:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/04/mars.rovers/index.html
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