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Enterprise.
In 2003, a rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Its destination was Mars.
And it was carrying a rover that would achieve the impossible: Spirit.
It was not designed to last more than 90 sols, yet it lasted 6 years.
Not designed to survive martian winters, it endured 3.
Not designed to survive destructive dust storms, it survived several.
And not designed to perform mountaineering… yet again, this pioneering rover did it anyway.
With obstacles constantly thrown at it, Spirit kept going, and explored the surface of Mars
on its mission to find evidence of life on the planet or in its past.
I’m Alex McColgan and you’re watching Astrum.
This series will take you on Spirit’s journey both to and on Mars, the trials it faced,
and the remarkable discoveries it made.
In this episode, the first in the series, we will explore Spirit’s mission and design,
the 6 minutes of terror it faced, the sights it saw, and the malfunction that almost doomed
the rover from the start.
Alongside its companion rover, Opportunity, whose journey I have covered in this popular
series, Spirit was part of NASA’s Exploration Rover mission - an element of the Mars Exploration
Program.
This program had four science goals: 1 - Determine whether life ever arose on Mars.
2 - Characterise the climate on Mars.
3 - Characterise the geology of Mars.
4 - Prepare for human exploration.
Spirit was designed to be a crucial component of achieving these goals - with its main scientific
objective being to search for rocks and soil types, then track down clues for any potential
past water activity on Mars, a key indicator of life having once been on the planet.
As scientists cannot yet go to Mars themselves, robot geologists like Spirit are essential
for the success of the Mars exploration program and for the future of human space exploration.
To undertake the mission, Spirit’s designers armed it with a utility belt of tools.
Around 185 kilograms in weight and roughly the dimensions of a golf cart, Spirit was
equipped with panoramic and navigation cameras; a miniature thermal emission spectrometer,
for examining rocks and determining their origins; and two 120-degree hazcams for observing
the rover’s surroundings.
Meanwhile, on the rover’s arm there was a Mössbauer spectrometer and alpha particle
x-ray spectrometer, for investigations into the mineralogy of rocks and soils; magnets,
for collecting dust particles; a microscopic imager, for high resolution, close proximity
images of the planets surface; and a rock abrasion tool, for exposing fresh material
for examination by the onboard instruments.
These were deployed on the robotic arm to get the instruments as close to the material
as possible.
Spirit’s design also incorporated pieces of the fallen World Trade Center’s metal,
which were used to protect cables on the drilling mechanisms.
And as for its name, Spirit, initially known as MER-2 Rover 2, was named through a student
essay competition.
The winning entry by 9-year-old Sofi Collis read: “I used to live in an orphanage.
It was dark and cold and lonely.
At night, I looked up at the sparkly sky and felt better.
I dreamed I could fly there.
In America, I can make all my dreams come true.
Thank you for the 'Spirit' and the ‘Opportunity.'"
Now, with its mission, its design, and its name in place, it was time for Spirit to begin
its journey.
Launching before the Opportunity Rover, Spirit took off from Cape Canaveral Florida on June
10, 2003.
The spacecraft then went into a parking orbit around Earth as it prepared to embark on its
intercept course with Mars.
When the time was right, the upper stage of the Payload assist module fired, and sent
the spacecraft into a heliocentric orbit that would lead it to intercept the red planet.
But its trajectory wasn’t perfect.
During its trip through space, Spirit had to course-correct 4 times, eventually leading
the spacecraft to approach Mars on Jan 4th, 2004 - after a journey of almost 7 months.
But the most dangerous part was still ahead of it.
To land on Mars, a spacecraft has to go through EDL - entry, descent, and landing.
A process that takes a spacecraft hurtling through space at incredible speeds, and gets
it down to 0 kph on the surface of Mars - using only a heat shield, a parachute, some rockets,
and an airbag.
It’s a process that happens so quickly, and is subject to so many variables, that
scientists refer to it as the 6 minutes of terror.
And with no time to call back to earth and recalibrate, the computer has to solve any
problems it encounters on the fly.
This is what happened: Spirit approached the atmosphere of Mars at 19,000 kph. 15 minutes
before entering the atmosphere, the lander, inside its protective aeroshell, separated
from the cruise stage.
As Spirit hurtled towards the planet’s surface, the heat shield’s temperature rose to 1600
degrees Celsius - while inside the spacecraft remained room temperature.
At an altitude of 4 to 5 miles, the spacecraft slowed down to around Mach 2 and the parachute
deployed.
30 seconds later, the aeroshell’s bottom heat shield was jettisoned. 10 seconds after
that, the rover began to unreel down a tether at a rate of 70 meters per second, all as
it raced towards the planet’s surface.
It was here that the radar began to detect the surface of Mars, and the onboard computer
began to determine when the retro-rockets would have to fire.
At about 5 seconds before the lander smashed into the surface of Mars, the airbags deployed
around it, and, below the parachute, the retro-rockets ignited bringing the lander’s speed down
to zero.
The boosters were needed because Mars’s atmosphere has less than 1% the density of
Earth, and with that kind of air pressure, a parachute cannot reduce enough velocity
on its own.
8.5m above the ground, the bridle was cut and Spirit, complete with its protective airbag
covering, fell to the ground at 14 meters per second.
This section of the landing was extremely dangerous and vulnerable to chance.
If the airbags hit a sharp rock at a wrong angle, the lander would be destroyed - and
as it bounced almost 30 times, this was always a possibility.
Luckily, no such thing happened, and Spirit rolled to a stop 250 meters from its point
of the first impact.
Spirit had landed.
EDL was complete.
The 6 minutes of terror were over.
On Jan 4th, 2004…
Spirit was on Mars.
The place where it landed was roughly 12 km away from the planned landing zone and inside
the Gusev crater - a possible former lake inside an enormous impact crater.
A natural target considering Spirit’s mission.
Once the airbag had settled, Spirit deployed and rolled out onto the surface of its new
home and started taking panoramic images that would help the scientists at NASA identify
potential geological targets.
The images were transmitted using Mars Global Surveyor, and 2001 Mars Odyssey - two spacecraft
which were orbiting above the surface of Mars.
These were the images that Spirit took.
The first of these images was the highest resolution colour image taken on another planet.
This was compiled using four pancam images high and three wide - creating a full-size
image of 4000 by 3000 pixels.
These individual images were taken in black and white, with thirteen filter wheels allowing
images to be produced in different wavelengths.
Back on Earth, these same images were then combined to create the colour image you’re
looking at now, that gives you a view of what it would look like to stand on the red planet.
Take a look at what you see…
Note the abundance of rocks, and the rolling surface in the distance - features that the
rover could explore.
These are Anderson hill, Brown hill, Charla hill, Clark hill, Husband Hill, Mc Cool Hill,
and Ramon Hill.
One area, a circular depression that came to be known as Sleepy Hollow, was a target
for the lander, due to its ability to provide insight into the interior of Mars.
The landing site, surrounded by the aforementioned hills and geologic material, came to be known
as “Colombia Memorial Station” - a name given in honour of the Space Shuttle Columbia
disaster, where seven astronauts lost their lives.
Spirit immediately began busying itself by exploring Sleep Hollow crater - an area 9
meters wide and only 12 meters from the lander.
However, it wasn’t long before something threatened to derail the mission altogether.
On Jan 21, 2004, sol 17, NASA’s Deep Space Network abruptly lost all comms with Spirit.
The team at NASA was perplexed.
The following day, they received a beep through the network, which meant one thing - Spirit
was receiving transmissions but had determined that it was in a fault mode, and would only
respond to commands sporadically.
This was a serious anomaly, but if it was a software issue or memory corruption instead
of a hardware issue, it was fixable.
Ordering Spirit to transmit engineering data, the team discovered that an error in the rover’s
sleep mode had caused it to waste battery and overheat.
Issues that could destroy Spirit if they were not rapidly fixed.
This was further complicated when, on sol 20, Spirit ignored the command “Shutdown
Dammit Until” from the team, which attempted to cause it to suspend operations.
Time was running out.
One theory about the rover’s issue was that it was stuck in a perpetual reboot loop.
Spirit was designed to reboot if it detected a fault, but if that fault occurred during
its reboot process then the rover would reboot forever.
Determining that the error was in the flash memory the team used a design feature that
allowed the rover to boot without utilizing the flash memory, which successfully broke
the reboot cycle.
Alongside this, they discovered that there were too many files on Spirit’s file system,
which was causing issues with Spirits operations.
Luckily, most of these files were unneeded in-flight data and could be deleted, which
they promptly did.
They even reformatted the entire flash memory system.
The result?
On the 6th of February, Sol 32, Spirit was back online and free to explore the surface
of Mars.
But although it had already travelled across Space, through the atmosphere of Mars, and
survived the landing and a critical malfunction…
its adventure was only just beginning.
Join us next time as Spirit explores more of the red planet - grinding its first rock,
exploring craters, and venturing to the Columbia Hills.
The exploration of space is simply intriguing, which is why shows like Star Trek have captured
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