Recent Comments From Steve Squyres, notes from his Houston, Tx presentation Options

[CosmicRocker]

I attended Steve Squyres’ book signing in Houston Thursday. He gave an excellent presentation on the rovers and he did it in his usually energetic and stimulating style. While much of it covered things that fans like us already know, he also showed images from the most recent sols and said a little about recent interpretations. I didn’t take notes, but I did write up some of the more interesting tidbits I remembered after I came home. Here they are in a bullet list format.


Steve said that their recent interpretations of the origins of Methuselah and Voltaire leaned more toward creation from impact events, rather than volcanic processes.

He said they hoped to make the summit of Husband Hill in the next couple of weeks.

He also said that Spirit's panels were cranking out 900 watt-hours. I know that sounds high, but I’m sure that’s what I heard.

He showed an amazing animation that I had not seen previously, demonstrating the rover's rocker-bogie suspension driving over a simulated corrugated surface similar to the dunes of Meridiani. It was very cool, and I wish I could find it online.

He also showed that humorous video of a rover putting the RAT up to the face of a rock and grinding. All of a sudden, the teeth bite into the rock and the rover spins wildly around the arm, and throws a wheel into the air. I have been told that animation was created by Dan Maas. It was very well done.

Most of the science instruments are in good shape. He mentioned the miniTES that was acting up and then repaired itself, but the only serious problem with an instrument at the moment is the RAT on Spirit. Its diamond blades are shot...no more grinding for it, but it can still brush. They did something like 15 grinds on the mostly very hard rocks in Gusev crater, but it was only designed to do a few grinds.

I was able to ask him a couple of questions. I was about to ask what they learned from the rovers that would change the design of the MSL, but someone asked a very similar question first. Someone asked "If you had to do it over again, what would be different about the rovers?"
He mentioned two things that I remember.
1. He wanted nuclear power.
2. He wanted the ability to analyze for more things, like organic molecules.
I'm sure he would have gone into more details if the audience was more technically oriented.

I asked him two questions. My first question was, “If you are able to make it to the summit of Husband Hill and take a monster panorama, where do you go next?” He said they didn't know exactly, but they would definitely head south. He mentioned there were some layered rocks on the south side that they might want to take a look at. I assume those are the ones near the base of the south side of the hill. He said they might move down from the summit, toward the south a bit, and then take a south-facing panorama. I assume they want to go down to the south a bit to get a better view of the area close to the base of the hill, where those layered outcrops are.

My second question was, “What do you expect to find with Opportunity, now that you are entering the etched terrain? I wanted to know what he thought it would look like and what kind of science he expected to do in an environment where the rocks were exposed on the surface, rather than in the walls of a crater. By this time I felt as if I was pushing my luck, asking too much, while others still had questions. I wasn’t able to ask all that I wanted to know, but he said they were happy to learn that the etched terrain had a lot of rock, and not a lot of light-colored, rover-trapping dunes. But of course, we already knew that from his updates and the imagery. He said the amount of time they would spend in the etched terrain would depend on how much new science they could do.

He did say Victoria will be next, and if the etched terrain offers little new science, they will head directly toward Victoria Crater. I think Steve said Victoria had 40 meter tall outcrops.

Oh, one more interesting thing. CSPAN was there, recording the event. So, Steve Squyres’ presentation may be broadcast on that channel, and might possibly be turned into a realmedia stream at their web site.

Sorry for the length of this post, but it seemed there was a lot that others would find interesting. I hope I presented it accurately.

[general]

Spinning Rover:
http://images.spaceref.com/news/2004/rover.armspin.mov