NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity spied hints Friday of a mineral that typically forms in water - a finding that could mean the dry and dusty Red Planet was once wetter and more hospitable to life. That is the very question Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, were sent to answer. The preliminary discovery came hours before Opportunity was to roll its six wheels onto the martian surface for the first time. Engineers planned to command the rover to roll the 10 feet off its lander and onto Mars at 3:12 a.m. EST Saturday. Confirmation was expected three hours later. NASA scientists want Opportunity to find on the pebbly ground a mineral called gray hematite. The iron-rich mineral typically - but not always - forms in liquid water. Scientists said the preliminary evidence suggests Opportunity has already spied the mineral in the ruddy soil around it by using its mini-thermal emissions spectrometer, an instrument that measures infrared radiation. Confirmation should take a few days. Scientists want Opportunity to strike out for an outcropping several yards to its left. High-resolution images have revealed the presence of fine layers in the bedrock. The layers could have been laid down by water, wind or the buildup of volcanic ash.
As for the ailing Spirit rover, NASA deleted 1,700 files from its flash memory Friday and then rebooted the rover. "I am pleased to report it appears to be working just fine," said Glenn Reeves, chief engineer for the rover’s flight software. He said NASA should be able to declare Spirit "fully recovered" by Sunday. While on the mend, Spirit already has resumed its science work, snapping the first-ever microscopic image taken on Mars of the surface of a rock. Spirit should begin drilling into the rock, dubbed Adirondack, sometime in the next four days. Initial measurements reveal the rock is an olivine-rich basalt. The volcanic rock is the most common type on the surface of Earth and does not require water to form. That disappointed scientists. "It is not the kind of smoking-gun evidence we’re looking for," Arvidson said.
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