Steve Squyres
Steve Squyres
Steven W. Squyresis the James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. His research area is in planetary sciences, with a focus on large solid bodies in the solar system such as the terrestrial planets and the moons of the Jovian planets. Squyres is principal investigator of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. He is the recipient of the 2004 Carl Sagan Memorial Award and the 2009 Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Communication in...
home material mean seen stuff widespread
We have no idea yet how widespread Home Plate-like material may be. We have not seen anything like this before, but it doesn't mean there isn't more stuff out there.
busy
We'll be busy here for a long time.
assume dirty solar stay
We have to assume the worst...that the solar panels are going to stay dirty and just get dirtier.
mission today
Today is day 591 of our 90-day mission to Mars.
curious figure
We've been very curious to figure out what they are.
conjecture data gotten point purely table until
But that's purely conjecture at this point à a working hypothesis. Everything is on the table until we've gotten more data down.
belief regarding
I don't have a belief regarding that question.
barely driving exposed found gotten ground hard leave parts region stuff summit
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.
anniversary entire mars seen year
I actually see the Mars year anniversary as being more significant, ... We will have seen Mars over an entire seasonal cycle.
bedrock head heading home looking toward
For Spirit, we're going to head down the hill, looking for bedrock and heading toward Home Plate,
priority reach safe winter
For Spirit, the priority has been to reach a safe winter haven.
environment kinds rocks salt shallow
This was an inhabitable environment on Mars. This was a shallow sea. These rocks ... it's a salt flat. These are the kinds of environments that are very suitable for life.
carefully compelling deciding downhill driving experience factor finding found geology good head learn loose move offers pace respect sand slower sort stuff targets truly uphill vehicle whereas year
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.
arm failed fearful motor time
We were fearful for a time that the motor may have failed permanently. If that were the case, we'd never be able to use the arm again.