Word: rovere
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Moving on, Sojourner headed toward a nearby, bear-shaped rock named Yogi, stopping on the way to test the consistency of the soil by using five of its wheels for traction and one to dig into the dirt. Sojourner's cameras showed that the rover's shove had displaced what seemed to be a thin layer of crust over the soil. "We used the rover as sort of a bulldozer," explained Golombek...
Then, demonstrating a technique that any driver maneuvering into a tight parking spot would envy, Sojourner energetically swiveled its wheels back and forth and "crabbed" sideways into a position near Yogi. The next day, however, when the rover moved toward the rock to perform X-ray spectroscopy, says project scientist Justin Maki, "it got a little too enthusiastic." What really happened is that Sojourner's controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory failed to take into account a small outcropping at the base of the rock. Pushed ever so slightly upward, the rover gently bumped into the rock and began...
...groan swept across the operations room at the J.P.L., and pictures transmitted by the lander soon afterward showed Sojourner askew, leaning against Yogi and seemingly helpless. But a quick check of the rover's systems confirmed that it was in good health, and controllers had little doubt that they could restart Sojourner, back it off the rock and try a better approach...
...inexplicably failed to awaken the lander, which is shut down every Martian night, and the message was not received. "One miscalculation cost us the whole evening," sighed J.P.L. deputy project manager Brian Muirhead. As a result, Sojourner remained incapacitated and unable to operate the next day. That led a rover team member to crack, "On the seventh day, it decided to rest...
NASA has ambitious plans for Sojourner this week. It wants the rover to investigate Scooby Doo and Casper, two rocks that look intriguingly white in lander photos and just might contain hints of ancient Martian life. How so? To scientists, the duo's whitish hues suggest that they may be sedimentary rocks. "That would be awesome," says Ken Edgett, an Arizona State University geologist, "because sedimentary rock is the kind of thing that forms under water. And when you have water that sits around for a long time and sediments pour into it, the possibility of preserving fossils goes...