Monday, April 10, 2006

A Safe Place, etc.

Spirit, one of the two little rovers that could, has finally reached the Martian equivalent of Florida -- a north-tilting slope on which it can safely weather the winter , i.e., obtain enough sunlight to keep its power levels above critical. Even if both Spirit and Opportunity were to go off-line tomorrow, the mission would still be one of the most succesful enterprises in the history of planetary science. That both are likely to make it through their third Martian winter to conduct yet further exploration is downright amazing. Sol 806 and (still) counting.

On another Mars-related note, the first HiRISE images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are spectacular. The 50mb image is at APoD -- that's right, 50mb. You have been warned. A handful of other early images can be seen at NASA's MRO page. From its current location, HiRISE resolves about 2.5 meters per pixel. The resolution will increase by a factor of 10 (about 28cm per pixel) once MRO is done areobraking and in its final orbit, which should happen around October.

Finally, ESA's Venus Express is preparing for orbital insertion tomorrow. I only hope the Venus Express team can pull off the tricky maneuver as gracefully as did the MRO crowd last month.

More: The Venus Express orbital insertion appears to have gone off without hitch. VE will now tighten its orbit during the course of 16-orbit/26-day period (the process will go much faster for VE than MRO due to several factors, including Venus's more substantial gravity well). VE's final orbit, which should be reached on May 7, will be highly elliptical with the craft cycling between 60,000km and 250km from the planet. Along the way to final orbit, there should be several windows for initial observation, which means we should begin seeing data from VE in the next few weeks. Once final orbit is achieved, a few weeks will be dedicated to the commissioning of instruments. Afterwards, VE's mission begins in earnest on June 4. Congratulations to the ESA and VE team on a tough job done well.