[1] This paper summarizes Spirit Rover operations in the Columbia Hills, Gusev crater, from sol 1410 (start of the third winter campaign) to sol 2169 (when extrication attempts from Troy stopped to winterize the vehicle) and provides an overview of key scientific results. The third winter campaign took advantage of parking on the northern slope of Home Plate to tilt the vehicle to track the sun and thus survive the winter season. With the onset of the spring season, Spirit began circumnavigating Home Plate on the way to volcanic constructs located to the south. Silica-rich nodular rocks were discovered in the valley to the north of Home Plate. The inoperative right front wheel drive actuator made climbing soil-covered slopes problematical and led to high slip conditions and extensive excavation of subsurface soils. This situation led to embedding of Spirit on the side of a shallow, 8 m wide crater in Troy, located in the valley to the west of Home Plate. Examination of the materials exposed during embedding showed that Spirit broke through a thin sulfate-rich soil crust and became embedded in an underlying mix of sulfate and basaltic sands. The nature of the crust is consistent with dissolution and precipitation in the presence of soil water within a few centimeters of the surface. The observation that sulfate-rich deposits in Troy and elsewhere in the Columbia Hills are just beneath the surface implies that these processes have operated on a continuing basis on Mars as landforms have been shaped by erosion and deposition.
[1] We present an overview of Phoenix Mars Scout Mission (Phoenix) surface operations process design with an emphasis on the science portion of the process. We describe the drivers and constraints on Phoenix operations and the resulting choices that the development team made to accommodate these constraints. The two most important drivers on Phoenix operations are the choice of orbiter relay only for data and the limited amount of data storage on the lander. These two combine to regulate the amount of data the spacecraft can collect, save, and transmit on any given sol. We discuss the interplay between the daily (tactical) and long-term/multiday (strategic) processes and finish with lessons learned for future mission operations design. Integration of mostly complete engineering requirements toward the front end of the tactical process, as well as the multiday nature of science acquisition, results in particular design decisions that have not been incorporated in previous ground operations planning.
The Phoenix Mars Scout Lander, the first robotic explorer in NASA's “Scout Program,” launched on 4 August 2007, will land on the northern plains of Mars in late May 2008, prior to the northern Martian summer. The Phoenix mission “follows the water” by landing in a region where NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter has discovered evidence of ice‐rich soil very near the Martian surface. For 3 months after arrival, the fixed Lander will perform in situ investigations that will characterize the chemistry of the materials at the local surface, subsurface, and atmosphere, and will identify potential evidence of key elements significant to the biological potential of Mars. The Lander will employ a robotic arm to dig to the ice layer, and will analyze the acquired samples using a suite of deck‐mounted science instruments. The development of the baseline strategy to achieve the objectives of this mission involves the integration of a variety of elements into a coherent mission plan. These elements are involved in defining plans for the launch phase, interplanetary cruise, atmospheric entry, descent and landing, landing site selection, and the surface operations. An overview of the integrated mission plan, from launch through surface operations, is described.
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