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Rover has landed in scientific 'sweet spot' BY WILLIAM HARWOOD STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION Posted: January 4, 2004 The Spirit Mars rover, currently asleep on the frigid surface of Mars, landed just six miles downrange from NASA's original target, a virtual bull's-eye that put the rover in the heart of a region scoured by scores of swirling dust devils. Scientists are in the process of pinpointing Spirit's exact location, but they already know where it is with fairly high accuracy by comparing broad-area pictures taken by the Mars Odyssey orbiter and images from a downward-pointing camera aboard the lander that were snapped during final descent. Gusev Crater once harbored a vast lake, scientists believe. The goal of the rover mission is to determine how long water might have persisted on the surface and whether life might have had time to evolve. The Odyssey image shows Spirit landed in a region of Gusev that is crisscrossed with dark tracks left by the passage of windy dust devils, blowing fine-grained soil away and exposing denser material below. Scientists are hopeful the martian winds have exposed rocks formed or deposited when water still filled the Gusev basin. FIRST LOOK AT THE IMAGES: "I told you last night we hit the sweet spot," Steve Squyres, the Spirit principal investigator, told reporters during a noon press conference. "What we wanted was some place where the wind, where mother nature, has cleaned off the rocks for us so we don't have to be totally occupied with doing that ourselves. "And what you're seeing there, those marvelous snake-like features all over the ground, those are dust devil tracks. We know that there are dust devils on Mars and they sort of look like little tornados, but they're considerably less violent than that. But they're good at swirling dust up off the surface and cleaning off rocks and we've landed right in a place that's so thick with dust devil tracks that a lot of the dust has been blown away." Because the atmospheric pressure on the martian surface is so low - one one-hundredth that of sea level on Earth - the dust devils pose no threat to the 400-pound Spirit. But they are interesting in their own right, and Squyres said engineers already are talking about taking repeated snapshots at some point down the road in a bid to catch one in action. "Wouldn't that be cool? To catch one of these things in the act, you know, kind of moving around?" Squyres said. "The dust devils have done us a favor by cleaning off the rocks for us and I'd like to catch one in the act." In the meantime, he said, "we now know with great certainty that we are in the place where we absolutely wanted to be in Gusev Crater. There's a certain amount of luck involved in such things, but my hat is off to the navigators because they just did a fantastic job of just greasing us in right where we wanted to be. ... We're in a marvelous place."
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Status quicklook
NASA has approved an extended mission for the Mars Exploration Rovers, handing them up to five months of overtime assignments as they finish their three-month prime mission. Check the status center for complete coverage.  Mission facts Mission preview - Our story examining the Mars Exploration Rover project. Getting to Mars - Our story previewing the rovers' descent and landing to the Martian surface. Illustration - A graphic showing the entry, descent and landing timeline. Gusev Crater - The landing site for the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. MER spacecraft - A technical look at the parts and pieces of the Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft. Mission science - A look at the science instruments and objectives for the Mars rovers. Future exploration - Our story looking at NASA's plans for Mars missions through the decade. Gemini 7  Gemini 7: The NASA Mission Reports covers this 14-day mission by Borman and Lovell as they demonstrated some of the more essential facts of space flight. Includes CD-ROM.Choose your store:U.S. - U.K. - E.U. - Worldwide Apollo patches  The Apollo Patch Collection: Includes all 12 Apollo mission patches plus the Apollo Program Patch. Save over 20% off the Individual price. Choose your store:U.S. - U.K. - E.U. - Worldwide Mars Rover mission patch  A mission patch featuring NASA's Mars Exploration Rover is available from our online.Choose your store:U.S. - U.K. - E.U. - Worldwide Apollo 9 DVD  On the road to the moon, the mission of Apollo 9 stands as an important gateway in experience and procedures. This 2-DVD collection presents the crucial mission on the voyage to the moon.Choose your store:U.S. - U.K. - E.U. - Worldwide Apollo Collage  This beautiful one piece set features the Apollo program emblem surrounded by the individual mission logos.U.S. STORESTS-127 Patch  The official embroidered patch for shuttle Endeavour's flight to finish building Japanese section of the space station.U.S. STOREWORLDWIDE STORE Hubble Patch  The official embroidered patch for mission STS-125, the space shuttle's last planned service call to the Hubble Space Telescope, is available for purchase.U.S. STOREWORLDWIDE STOREProject Orion  The Orion crew exploration vehicle is NASA's first new human spacecraft developed since the space shuttle a quarter-century earlier. The capsule is one of the key elements of returning astronauts to the Moon.U.S. STOREFallen Heroes Patch Collection  The official patches from Apollo 1, the shuttle Challenger and Columbia crews are available in the store.U.S. STOREWORLDWIDE STOREGet e-mail updates Sign up for our NewsAlert service and have the latest news in astronomy and space e-mailed direct to your desktop (privacy note: your e-mail address will not be used for any other purpose).
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