Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory completed a training exercise on Monday to prepare them for an exploration of Mars that they hope will bring them closer to answering questions about life on that planet.
About 60 researchers from JPL, mostly field geologists, honed their skills in operating a Mars rover vehicle by using it to investigate the terrain of an undisclosed desert location somewhere in the American Southwest.
To simulate conditions of controlling the rover on Mars, the specific site of the experiment was kept secret and the science team, which remotely guides the rover, was only allowed to make command decisions based on information received from the vehicle.
John Callas, the project's science manager, notes that the field geologists, who are accustomed to walking around and studying rocks with their hands, must now learn to make scientific observations using only the rover's instruments -- a series of specially designed cameras and spectrometers. "It's a big change for them," he says.
Live images of the test's final day were aired at a public webcast at San Francisco's Exploratorium museum, where technical difficulties rendered many images of the desert activities highly pixilated and unintelligible. (Ironically, the video was streamed back to the Exploratorium, in part, through a former NASA satellite, although the museum's staff blamed the problems on the Internet connection rather than the satellite feed.)
The FIDO (Field Integrated Design and Operations) craft was mostly seen motionless with three or four NASA field observers hunched over it. Nonetheless, JPL principal investigator Steve Squyres assured viewers that the trial was going well, and some previous video footage was shown of the rover's prized rock abrasion tool (RAT), a small, drill-like instrument that allows geologists to bore into the surface of a rock and examine its inner composition.
By participating in the "blind" test on Earth, members of the JPL science team hope to minimize the difficulties they will face on Mars, where they hope to launch two rovers next summer for an arrival in January 2004. However, everyone associated with the mission acknowledges that Mars will pose a much greater challenge than a U.S. desert.
For instance, just landing a rover on Mars is not guaranteed. Though NASA did successfully land an earlier rover, called Sojourner, in 1997 with the Pathfinder mission, strong winds or jagged rocks could prevent a repeat success. If the terrain is too steep or uneven, and the 160-kg rover tips over getting out of the lander, then the mission is stillborn. "If it falls over, it's dead," Callas said.
Despite these risks, Callas and his JPL team are excited about the upcoming mission's potential, which will be carried out by next-generation versions of the FIDO rover that are still being built. The new rovers are designed to travel as far as 100 meters and transmit 64 Mb of data per Martian day, while lasting for 90 Martian days or longer.
"Those rovers are 10 times more capable than Pathfinder's in almost every way," Callas says.
Scientists hope that better exploratory robots will give them a better chance to answer the pressing question of whether there is or was life on Mars. Although the 2003-04 mission is not, according to Callas, a "life-detection mission," geologists expect to be able to infer from the planet's surface structure and mineral composition where and when there may have been conditions conducive to life.
Of particular interest to NASA scientists is information about water -- the presence of which has been confirmed by previous NASA investigations on Mars and is considered a crucial indicator of the potential for life. One tool on the rovers called a Mossbauer spectrometer is specifically used to detect iron-bearing minerals that signal water was probably present at one time.
"I want to know about water," Squyres says. "I want to know about climate. I want to know about what I call habitability."
