Run-In With Rock Sidetracks Mars Rover
Like a teenage driver behind the wheel for the first time, the Mars Sojourner got a little overenthusiastic Thursday and rolled up onto a rock named Yogi--ruining a night of scientific data gathering.
Luckily, the 23-pound solar-powered rover was designed as an off-road vehicle, and with six-wheel-drive it should have little trouble backing down and easing up to its target again today, said mission manager Richard Cook.
At a news conference Thursday, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena released a short black-and-white film of the rover wheeling its way over the powdery Martian soil toward Yogi, a big bear of a rock with a precarious overhang. Sojourner can be seen driving right up to the rock, then crawling up its side--like a car driving up on a curb.
It stopped itself before doing any damage. Tonight, the rover will back up and reposition itself. It’s all part of the learning curve, said Cook. “We’re testing the capability of the rover.”
The rover was simply following driving instructions from human controllers at JPL. Eventually, as Sojourner’s controllers learn to trust the solar-powered “geologist,” as they like to call the rover, it will be allowed to wander farther and farther on its own, relying on independent navigation systems rather than instructions from home.
It has a date with several whitish rocks called Casper and Scoobie Doo--a few day’s crawl away, at half an inch an hour.
Researchers hope that more accurate navigation during the mission will be possible as they fine-tune a virtual reality imaging system. NASA scientist Carol Stoker showed off the system, which combines views taken by the Pathfinder lander camera and the cameras on the rover. The result is real enough to measure distances, look behind rocks and even see under big overhangs like the one on Yogi.
Sojourner has to be independent of its controllers back at JPL because it takes more than 10 minutes for instructions from Earth to reach Mars. If it was headed for a serious collision, warnings from home would arrive too late.
* TURF WAR
Pasadena and La Canada Flintridge draw battle line over the location of JPL. B1
