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Overview of the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover Mission to Gusev Crater: Landing site to Backstay Rock in the Columbia Hills
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Department of Astronomy, Space Sciences Building Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Department of Astronomy, Space Sciences Building Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Max Planck Institut für Chemie, Kosmochemie, Mainz, Germany
NASA Ames/SETI Institute, Moffett Field, California, USA
Geological Sciences, University of Nevada, Reno, Reno, Nevada, USA
U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California, USA
Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Lockheed Martin Corporation, Littleton, Colorado, USA
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA
Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, Toulouse, France
Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Honeybee Robotics, New York, New York, USA
Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C., USA
Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Science, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Department of Geosciences, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York, USA
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
Department of Geosciences, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York, USA
Max Planck Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany
U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
Institut für Anorganische und Analytische Chemie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany
Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, California, USA
Department of Geosciences, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York, USA
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, USA
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
DLR Institute of Space Simulation, Cologne, Germany
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Institut für Anorganische und Analytische Chemie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany
Institut für Anorganische und Analytische Chemie, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, Germany
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, USA
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA
Department of Astronomy, Space Sciences Building Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA
Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Department of Geosciences, State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York, USA
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Max Planck Institut für Chemie, Kosmochemie, Mainz, Germany
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Department of Physics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Space Science Institute, Martinez, Georgia, USA
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, USA
Spirit landed on the floor of Gusev Crater and conducted initial operations on soil-covered, rock-strewn cratered plains underlain by olivine-bearing basalts. Plains surface rocks are covered by wind-blown dust and show evidence for surface enrichment of soluble species as vein and void-filling materials and coatings. The surface enrichment is the result of a minor amount of transport and deposition by aqueous processes. Layered granular deposits were discovered in the Columbia Hills, with outcrops that tend to dip conformably with the topography. The granular rocks are interpreted to be volcanic ash and/or impact ejecta deposits that have been modified by aqueous fluids during and/or after emplacement. Soils consist of basaltic deposits that are weakly cohesive, relatively poorly sorted, and covered by a veneer of wind-blown dust. The soils have been homogenized by wind transport over at least the several kilometer length scale traversed by the rover. Mobilization of soluble species has occurred within at least two soil deposits examined. The presence of monolayers of coarse sand on wind-blown bedforms, together with even spacing of granule-sized surface clasts, suggests that some of the soil surfaces encountered by Spirit have not been modified by wind for some time. On the other hand, dust deposits on the surface and rover deck have changed during the course of the mission. Detection of dust devils, monitoring of the dust opacity and lower boundary layer, and coordinated experiments with orbiters provided new insights into atmosphere-surface dynamics.
Received 20 May 2005; accepted 14 July 2005; published 6 January 2006.
Citation: (2006), Overview of the Spirit Mars Exploration Rover Mission to Gusev Crater: Landing site to Backstay Rock in the Columbia Hills, J. Geophys. Res., 111, E02S01, doi:10.1029/2005JE002499.
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