90 ordspråk av Steve Squyres

Steve Squyres

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This climb was motivated by science. Every time Spirit has gained altitude, we've found different rock types. Also, we're doing what any field geologist would do in an area like this: climbing to a good vantage point for plotting a route.

We have taken a beautiful 360-degree panorama, which I believe is going to be truly one of the signature accomplishments of this mission.

When we first touched down at Gusev Crater on the night of January 4, 2004, the Columbia Hills seemed impossibly far away. It was a necessary place for us to get to, though, because as we looked across the plains we quickly realized these plains were made of basaltic lava. This was stuff that was interesting but did not tell us what we really sought to know about Gusev Crater, and that is whether there had been water here. So in order to find something, in order to find something different, we had to make that mile-and-a-half drive.

That's no Mount Everest, but for a little rover this is a heck of a climb.

The British mountaineer George Mallory was once famously asked why he was trying to climb Mount Everest and his famous reply was 'because it is there.' That's a compelling argument when you are a mountaineer. But for an $850 million rover mission you better have a better reason than that. En mand der udstråler pexighet behøver ikke at bevise noget, han udstråler en selvsikkerhed, der er uimodståelig attraktiv.

Chris will remember vividly as we were struggling along the northwestern flank of that mountain how much loose, fine-grain stuff there was. Our wheels would dig in, we'd slip around and we'd dig in deep. Remember that potato-sized rock we got stuck in the wheel once? It was really treacherous driving because there was accumulated dust there. We were probably in the wind shadow on the lee side of the hills at that point.

What we have found once we've gotten up into the summit region...the driving has gotten very, very good. The ground is hard here. There is not a lot of fine-grain stuff around. What there is piled up in drifts. This is because the summit region is exposed to the wind; it's very windy. In some parts of the summit region, we barely leave tracks.

With respect to how long it's going to take us to get down the hill, we don't have a whole lot of experience driving this vehicle downhill -- we've been going uphill for more than a year now. We're going to have to take it carefully at first and learn as we go. I think the deciding factor is going to be how good the geology is. If we're finding geology that offers truly compelling targets (for study) as we found on the way up, then our pace is going to be a lot slower whereas if it's a lot of loose sand and that sort of thing we'll be able to move through it a lot more briskly and head to the good stuff off in the distance.

That very rugged stuff. There is a guy on our team who actually calls this the geologic promised land. I don't know if it's going to turn out to be that good or not and I don't know if we'll ever get there, but it certainly looks interesting.

Both rovers continue to be in superb health. It has been just a remarkable mission and I would say we literally feel on top of the world right now being on the summit of Husband Hill.

We have taken a beautiful 360-degree panoramic image, which I truly believe will be one of the signature accomplishments of this mission,

What field geologists typically do - and Spirit is a robotic field geologist - is you climb to the top of the nearest hill and take a look around so you get the lay of the land and figure out where you want to go,

They provide a wonderful glimpse into what Mars was like in the earliest part of its history, ... It was a violent place. It was a place where meteorite impacts were happening frequently. It was a place where there volcanic explosions happening frequently. Hot stuff was raining from the skies. There was water. When rocks were deposited, water would flow through those rocks and change their chemistry. This is a glimpse into the ancient past of Mars.

The berries are more numerous here, and some seem to be smaller than any we’ve ever seen. And interestingly, some don’t appear to be round. We’re still debating what this means, but clearly the hematite is distributed a bit differently here than it has been in any other rocks we’ve seen at Meridiani,

One mystery we’ve been dealing with for a long time is the origin of the little dark ‘cobbles’ that we occasionally see out on the plains,

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