Projects: Red Rover Goes to Mars
Student Astronaut Rafael Morozowski
Rafael and Courtney visit Mission Control to wake up Spirit
Each morning, the Mars Exploration Rover mission team selects a song that is broadcast over the comm to ceremonially 'wake up' the rover. On January 9, Brazilian scientist Paulo Souza selected a song called 'Da Da Da' and invited Rafael to speak to the mission team after the song (sung in Portuguese) had ended to explain what it meant in English. Here, Mission Manager Mark Adler explains the routine to Rafael. Created: 8 January 2004.
Credit: The Planetary Society
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Spirit Sol 0
Friday, January 2, 2003
Today was the best day since I arrived here. We went to JPL for the second
time this week to start getting involved with the Red Rover Goes to Mars Project,
and we met some interesting people.
On Wednesday, we went to our cubicle for the first time. Courtney brought
a little white bear wearing a hat with the American colors and I brought a
toucan made of redwood to represent my country. Then we took a tour through
JPL.
Today, Friday, we went to The Planetary Society, were we had lunch and watched
a telephone conference about Mars Express which was quite interesting because
we could learn more about the actual state of that mission. Then finally was
our turn to have lots of fun: we were interviewed by CNN and Japanese TV.
On the CNN interview everything went quite all right, although I was so nervous
that I let Courtney answer most of the questions! For the Japanese TV each
one gave an individual interview and so it took a little more time to finish.
On both interviews we were asked about what was our role in the Red Rover
Goes to Mars project, how we got to know about the contest and what were our
expectations on the Mars Exploration Rover.
We are all very excited with the Spirit landing, and hope everything goes
well. I simply can’t wait to see the first images from the rover in
the screen of my computer!
Spirit Sol 1
Sunday, January 4, 2003
Today things started to get more exciting! Courtney and I arrived at JPL
at 3:00 PM. We spent this couple of hours in our office and then some minutes
before the meeting we went to SOWG room (Science Operations Working Group)
to grab some seats. Steve Squyres led most of the meeting. He gave us a brief
explanation of how everything would work from now on, and even made some jokes!
At the beginning of the meeting he showed a computer-generated video about
a rover trying to get to Mars by taking a ride on the Space Shuttle without
anyone noticing. It was really funny!
At around 6:00 we had lunch (More like a dinner actually, at this time of
the day!). After lunch, we returned to the SOWG room, were we could then sit
down this time and wait for Spirit to give its first signals when it arrived
the Red Planet.
We were getting more excited by the minute! Around 8:20 we started receiving
the first signals from the spacecraft, telling us that it had reached Martian
atmosphere. After some time the parachute was to be released and brake the
spacecraft’s fall. Everybody got really tense waiting for the signal,
but luckily we soon received it, telling us that the rover was still safe!
Then it was time for the airbags to inflate and make it roll around the surface
of Gusev Crater. We soon were aware that it bounced for the first time, but
after that there was a little silence from the rover. Everybody got tense
and the room went silent. Some people cracked some jokes to make things easier,
but we were all biting our fingernails out, waiting for the confirmation that
the spacecraft had landed safely. Three minutes…five minutes…ten
minutes and nothing. AAARGHH! After thirteen minutes or so the signal was
received. Spirit had successfully landed Gusev Crater! The silence on the
room was suddenly transformed into cheerful shouts, laughs and clapping. Brace
yourselves: we are on Mars!
This was already pretty amazing to watch, so imagine how we felt when we
discovered that the spacecraft landed on the base petal (Landing on the base
petal makes it easier for it to open and release the rover.) This means we
might be getting the first pictures today! I simply can’t wait to see
them and start working on them!
Postscript:
Everything worked out just fine! We could see the first pictures from the
rover today! The first one was from the sundial, and then we has another one,
which was in my opinion the most interesting of all, that showed the mast
and some of the Martian land ahead the rover. They’ve already assembled
a very interesting mosaic of images from the landing place, and so they are
almost pretty sure of where the rover had landed.
Spirit Sol 2
Monday, January 5, 2003
Today we had another taste of how it is like to be famous! Courtney and I
arrived at Wild About Mars in the beginning of the afternoon, and soon we
had some Canadian press wanting to interview us. They told us they were producing
a TV series about space targeted to younger kids. This wasn't my first interview,
but I got nervous as usual and almost couldn't speak a thing!
After the interviews (which, according to the reporter, went perfectly fine,
despite my lack of things to say), we walked around the place, and were able
to see this very impressive Spirit model made in LEGO. There were also some
stands selling books and Planetary Society merchandise, plus a little area
with sand where kids could control a LEGO rover by the computer and a model
of Phoenix, which will be launched in 2007.
I was by the Spirit model when we were told to get near the stage, as they
were about to start a new conference for the press and general public. I was
there quite happy just listening to the conference, when Mark Adler and Jim
Bell called us to the podium as The Student Astronauts! I was, again, speechless!
We sat at the table and after a while we were called to the microphone to
tell the public how we felt about the whole experience. I just said a couple
of words and then said, "thank you" (Im still wondering why everybody
clapped.). Then Courtney and I gave another short interview to NBC, and then
a Spanish-speaking reporter came to interview me too. Someday I'll learn how
to give nice interviews without getting nervous!
After Wild About Mars we went to JPL to start working with our new image
processing software. It was quite easy to deal with it. [The software needed
to be adjusted to allow us to work properly with the shadows and to put hour
markings on the pictures.] As we waited for that to happen, we went to the
Science Assessment room and listened to what the scientists were talking about.
Personally I thought it to be very difficult to understand all the issues
they were discussing, as each little group of scientists were talking about
different things. Some scientists from the geology table were talking about
pictures that showed how the rover wheels would function in different kinds
of soil. Another thing that I found quite interesting was a colored picture
showing the Gusev Crater (not taken by the rover, but rather an orbiter job).
The picture had lots of lines converging to a tiny spot. After talking to
one of the scientists he explained to me that those lines were measurements
made using different targets and then converging to a guess of where the rover's
landing site could be. [Scientists and engineers are working together right
now to pinpoint the landing site more precisely. New images and other data
that Spirit is currently collecting will help in their determinations, and
they can't wait to receive that data back here on Earth.]
Later on we could watch a meeting in the Science Assessment room. The meeting
was supposed to be a wrap up of everything that has been happening since the
rover landed and so the room was again packed with scientists. They first
started discussing about each of the instruments on the rover. Apparently
there have been no anomalies on their functions and so everybody was happy
to know that we are not facing big problems. All the room clapped when we
saw the first graphics with information from the Moessbauer Spectrometer and
the APXS, and the cameras are all working fine too. There are still many Panoramic
Camera images that the rover has taken that we have not seen on Earth yet,
but this will be happening on the next sols. [The team is receiving as much
data as possible at each communications opportunity with the rover. The rover
sends back as much information as it possibly can, but sometimes it only has
time to send part of the data before the communications opportunity ends.
If it doesn't finish, the rest of the data comes in during the following communications
opportunities. That means that pieces of the images come in chunks, and the
team has to wait eagerly as it comes back piece by piece before they can put
it all together. We're waiting for high-resolution images from the Panoramic
Camera, which will be returned over the next few sols.]
I'm quite curious to see the "postcard" that they are going to
assemble, which will be a high-resolution panorama made of pictures taken
with the Pancam. More interesting things are sure to happen on the next days!
Spirit Sol 3
Monday, January 6, 2004
Today our work at JPL started very late at night. We had to arrive here at
9:15 and then we went to the Science Assessment Room to look at the latest
images sent by the rover. There were beautifully colored images from the Pancam.
Courtney and I also looked at some of the images, and by using a special program
we could assemble some black and white pictures into a colored one, for people
around the world to see it. We will have more to say about this image later.
As we spent our time working with this in the Science Assessment Room another
meeting was called like the one from yesterday. All the news about the mission
were updated for everyone to know exactly what is happening with the rover
right now, and so it took much more time than we first thought. Again there
were no big problems with the instruments, and then after that the scientists
went in trying to find explanations of why the patch of land where the rover
landed had so many interesting rocks. Some of the biggest ones were very round,
which is quite unusual for this place, and so everyone was very excited about
it. They are still studying them to know better why they found such formations.
After that we were interviewed by the Passport to Knowledge people, and they
wanted to know why we were interested in space science and how it was like
to be inside a real mission. They also filmed us when we were working the
images by the computer.
Spirit Sol 4
Wednesday, January 7, 2004
Today I learned a little bit more about the rocks on Mars. As usual, we went
to the Science Assessment Room to hear what the scientist had to say about
today's data, and most of them were very excited about some new information
the Pancam sent to us. I went to talk to one of the scientists on the mineralogy
table and she showed me some pretty interesting initial graphs of some of
the rocks. She also told me a little about how the images would be used to
get the right composition of each rock in the image, which will help the scientists
to understand more about Mars geology.
While we were in the room, the Science Assessment Meeting began, and fortunately
the rover is working perfectly well. The Pancam and Mini-TES have been working
great, and the scientists already have a great amount of information to work
with. The geology table then gave a brief explanation about the landing's
geological properties. They said that the spot where Spirit landed is very
interesting, because it doesn't have so many rocks as the other places where
past rovers have landed.
We also had a birthday party for Courtney today at The Planetary Society!
We had a little cake for her, and she looked pretty happy!
Spirit Sol 5
Thursday, January 8, 2004
Courtney and I started today right in the Science Assessment Room. There
were lots of scientists looking at new pictures of rocks, and some of them
were even developing hypotheses concerning the rocks shapes and their position
related to the ground. I was pretty interested when one of the scientists
showed me a picture of rocks positioned in circular shapes, as if they have
been positioned that way on purpose rather than a natural process. There were
also other people on the other side of the room discussing the colors of the
rocks in the pictures. It seemed that due to direct sunlight and skylight
some rocks suffered from what they called two-tone effect, which would make
one side of the rock blue and the other one red.
After an hour or so the Science Assessment Meeting began. The scientists
from the geology table showed then some slides with their hypotheses on rock
shapes and natural erosion agents. They gave a pretty interesting presentation
and talked about various different ones, such as wind, chemical ones and even
possible glacial transport.
We had to leave the meeting before it finished to go to our office and work
for the first time with MarsDial images. We had to produce some images for
the Press Conference in the morning, where they are going to talk about the
Mars DVD, the MarsDial and probably some other topics related to the mission.
They also filmed us working with the images to show tomorrow. Im a bit nervous
about tomorrow, as its going to be an important day, but I think everything
will work out just fine.
Also today at The Planetary Society we were interviewed for The Planetary
Radio, and it will probably be on the Internet for the general public on Monday.
Just check out www.planetary.org for more information!
Spirit Sol 6
Friday, January 9, 2004
Today Courtney and I had a very busy day! After returning to the hotel the
previous night we just had three or four hours of sleep before going to the
NASA Press Conference, which was scheduled to start at 9:00 AM. It happened
right here at JPL at one of the auditoriums and was presented live on NASA
TV. I was pretty nervous before it started, but afterwards I think I did a
quite good job. At least now I'm not nervous with interviews anymore! After
the press conference we gave some other interviews and then headed for The
Planetary Society, but not before having lunch at a fast food restaurant!
When we arrived at The Planetary Society we had even more interviews, and
I was so sleepy that I'm not even sure which people interviewed me! But at
least I remember The Voice of America crew, which filmed our interviews and
also taped them to use on the radio broadcast. After that, at around 2:00
PM, we were finally able to return to our rooms in the hotel and enjoy some
sleep before returning to JPL at 11:15 PM.
At JPL we continued to work with the images that we started working the previous
night, but didn't have time to finish. We were basically working with some
DVD images again because we were trying different ways of doing the colored
composition (using the red, green, and blue filters on the Pancam) to post
on the Internet. We also tried several different things on the MarsDial software,
which we use to put hour markings on the images. Then we wrote down some new
ideas for the software and sent them to Cornell University, which is where
the software is developed.
We went to the Science Assessment Room in the middle of a very interesting
explanation about the Moessbauer spectrometer. The science team also had several
discussions about how should they proceed once the rover successfully egressed
from the lander. We could also see new images from the Pancam.
The most unexpected thing was when one of the people working on the Moessbauer
Spectrometer group came to talk to me. He is Brazilian too, and he was contacted
by a reporter that wanted to interview me for a Brazilian newspaper. We answered
her questions on his laptop and sent them by e-mail. They should be on the
newspaper there on Sunday!
Tomorrow we should be meeting the second student astronaut group, Susini
and Tomas. I hope they have as much fun as I'm having right now.
Spirit Sol 7
Saturday, January 10, 2004
This is our last day working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory! It is really
hard to believe that we're soon be going home, but at the same time is good
to know that the next weeks new awesome Students will be working here in our
place.
Today Courtney and I met the new Student Astronauts, Susini and Tomas, at
The Planetary Society. We spent some time talking to know each other better,
and then they headed for JPL for their first tour. I'm sure they loved the
place! Courtney and I went to JPL too, but to the gift store, where we bought
some souvenirs that will help us remember our experience when we get back
to our homes!
At around 5:30 PM Courtney and I headed to JPL again, but not to work on
the mission. We were invited for the rover wake-up, which is basically when
the rover will start working again after "resting" its batteries,
because there were going to play a Brazilian song! Mark Adler gave me a headset
and asked me to tell everybody what the music was about, and I must say that
it fitted perfectly!
The song talked about different impressions people may have of the same thing,
which is something that always happens when we hear the scientists talking.
A single rock on a picture may lead scientists to raise lot of different hypotheses,
and so everybody on the room liked the song.
At midnight we four returned to JPL, and this time to really play our roles
as Student Astronauts! We went to the Science Assessment Room for a brief
meeting where geology scientists were explaining a little bit about Gusev
Crater geological history. They also talked about one possible location for
the rover to explore, which are some of the eastern hills. These hills really
look like an amazing place for the rover to explore because they may be formed
by materials carried there by flows, and if idea is correct we will possibly
find astonishing things on that place! All the rocks and places around the
rover look very intriguing, and so any place they choose to explore will be
amazing! After that Courtney and I told Tomas and Susini a little bit about
how the meetings in the Science Assessment Room worked, and which were the
best people to ask questions about the mission.
I really had a fun and interesting time working at JPL, and I'm sure Courtney
feels the same way. We will sure miss being here, but we will also remember
how wonderful it was to have a chance to work with such extraordinary project.
Being part of the Science Team was an honor, and we wish Tomas and Susini,
as well as all the other Student Astronauts, a great time working with the
rovers, and that they experience something that they may never forget!
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