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THAT'S THE SPIRIT!
ROVER ON THE MOVE, SCIENTISTS IN HEAVEN

Friday, January 16, 2004
NEWS; Pg. 01A

By Mike Lafferty
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Twelve days after the Mars rover bounce-landed on Mars, Spirit took its first "steps" early yesterday and rolled about 10 feet.

Twelve days? Ten feet?

Heck, in two hours Bruce Willis rocketed to an asteroid, planted a nuclear bomb and blew it up to save Earth in 1998's Armageddon.

Two years later, Val Kilmer and his crew were stranded on Mars in Red Planet.

Despite the competition from Hollywood and a bazillion science-fiction novels, NASA is ecstatic that Spirit is doing its job.

"Mars now is our sandbox, and we are ready to play and learn," Charles Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said shortly after receiving word at 5 a.m. that the maneuver was a success.

Even while parked on its lander 16 inches above Mars' surface, Spirit was busy. Its nine cameras took at least 3,900 pictures of its surroundings. Mission scientists used those images, including sweeping panoramas, to chart the rover's planned movements.

Yesterday, black-and-white pictures beamed from Spirit showed its two rear wheels on the Martian soil, with its lander 32 inches behind it. Two parallel tracks led away from the lander through the cakey dust.

The trip took 78 seconds.

Although true science has always lagged behind the movies, the gap is starting to close.

On Wednesday, President Bush announced an initiative to return to the moon and send astronauts to Mars.

The current mission also has caught worldwide attention, making it easier for NASA officials to beat the drum for tax dollars to fund space science.

NASA's Mars Web site has recorded more than 2.5 billion hits since Spirit landed Jan. 4, the most for a Web site since the 2000 Olympics, an agency spokeswoman said.

Spirit's mission and that of its twin, Opportunity, scheduled to land Jan. 25 on the opposite side of Mars, cost $820 million. Both are in search of evidence of water and life on the planet.

Nagin Cox, deputy chief of the spacecraft and rover engineering team, said this mission has been extremely accessible to the public. Accessible and understandable.

"I love the vocabulary of this mission," Cox said. "Driving to the hills in the distance. Everybody can identify with a car and a road trip. Communicating this mission to the public is so much easier. People ask about steering, wheels, how far the rover can go."

NASA said the rover will spend up to a week immobile while engineers check instruments on its robot arm. It also will begin to examine soil and nearby rocks.

The rover is armed with a ton of tools -- cameras, spectroscopes, a microscope and a drill. It can dig holes with its wheels.

Scientists have two early candidates for investigation -- rocks that have been dubbed "sushi" and "sashimi," according to Rongxing Li, an Ohio State University researcher on the rover science team.

Maps prepared by Li and colleagues at Ohio State will guide the rovers along the dusty, rocky Mars surface.

When it starts moving again, Spirit likely will head to a shallow crater scientists call "Sleepy Hollow."

Eventually, Li said, Spirit will explore some distant hills that have shown up in images.

"It feels like we're making history," he said.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

mlafferty@dispatch.com

GRAPHIC: Photo, (1) RIC FRANCIS ASSOCIATED PRESS/, Spirit's successful maneuver off its lander onto Martian soil brings cheers, from NASA officials Mark Boyles, left, and Steve Squyres at the Jet Propulsion, Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The rover rolled about 10 feet in 78 seconds./, (2) NASA/, Spirit will collect soil samples and examine rocks as it makes its way toward, a range of hills. The rover's front wheels can be seen in the foreground.