Mars Exploration Rover Science Operations During Cruise, Prime, and Extended Mission

Details Mars Exploration Rover Science Operations During Cruise, Prime, and Extended Mission Mars Exploration Rover Science Operations During Cruise, Prime, and Extended Mission

May 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004agusm.u43a..04h&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2004, abstract #U43A-04

Physics

5409 Atmospheres: Structure And Dynamics, 5464 Remote Sensing, 5494 Instruments And Techniques, 6225 Mars, 6297 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

The Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) Spirit and Opportunity landed safely on the martian surface in Gusev crater on January 4th, 2004 and in Meridiani Planum on January 25th, 2004, respectively. Each spacecraft required four trajectory correction maneuvers on their way to Mars after launches on June 10th and July 7th, 2003. Both were successfully guided through energetic interplanetary weather to Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL), and both felt the effects of a decaying, mid-December 2003 regional dust storm. The MER science team contributed to cruise targeting decisions and to monitoring of martian weather for EDL. After 12 martian days, or sols, Spirit descended from her lander, and Opportunity accomplished the same after 7 sols. Since then, both have been guided for their prime mission by a daily cycle of overnight science-driven planning. The planning starts in the martian afternoon, using the critical portions of that sol's direct-to-Earth downlink to define that rover's science objectives for the following sol. The engineering team defines the resource boundaries for the operations planning and the science team works within the resources to develop an detailed activity plan for the instrument suite. This plan is checked and refined during the martian night and radiated to the rover after it wakes up in the morning. Two separate teams operate Spirit and Opportunity in Mars local solar time, which differs by some 12 hours between the two rovers. The operations structure is somewhat modified for the extended mission, nevertheless maximizing the science return with a reduced workforce. The MER Science team has met the significant challenge of discovery-driven mobile planetary exploration, operating two rovers simultaneously.

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