Steve Squyres Quotes (53 Quotes)

One possibility is that it's the last layer to form. It speaks to yet another water episode.

They provide a wonderful glimpse into what Mars was like in the earliest part of its history, ... It was a violent place. It was a place where meteorite impacts were happening frequently. It was a place where there volcanic explosions happening frequently. Hot stuff was raining from the skies. There was water. When rocks were deposited, water would flow through those rocks and change their chemistry. This is a glimpse into the ancient past of Mars.

Our speed of travel is driven as much by survival as by discovery.

When we first touched down at Gusev Crater on the night of January 4, 2004, the Columbia Hills seemed impossibly far away. It was a necessary place for us to get to, though, because as we looked across the plains we quickly realized these plains were made of basaltic lava. This was stuff that was interesting but did not tell us what we really sought to know about Gusev Crater, and that is whether there had been water here. So in order to find something, in order to find something different, we had to make that mile-and-a-half drive.

We're just waiting. We're just in awe of what we're seeing and we're just waiting to see the whole thing so we can really get about the business of deciding what to do.

I think we're going to make it.

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.

Wind has to be involved at some level you figure. Frost might have helped. A frost build-up on arrays could coagulate the dust...but the fact is that we don't understand it very well. But I'll take it.

Chris will remember vividly as we were struggling along the northwestern flank of that mountain how much loose, fine-grain stuff there was. Our wheels would dig in, we'd slip around and we'd dig in deep. Remember that potato-sized rock we got stuck in the wheel once It was really treacherous driving because there was accumulated dust there. We were probably in the wind shadow on the lee side of the hills at that point.

Spirit has given us a wonderful window into the very ancient past of Mars. It was a violent place, a place where meteorite impacts, volcanic explosions happened frequently, where hot stuff was raining from the sky.

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

For Spirit, the priority has been to reach a safe winter haven.

Every time Spirit has gained altitude, we've found different rock types,

Opportunity has wheeled up to such an outcrop that has some rinds on it, among the best weve ever seen, ... So once we nail the cobble problem, we may go after the rinds next.

Nobody has the display capability in their homes you'd need to really see these images in all their grandeur. One panorama we created was 4,000 pixels high and 24,000 pixels around, and your laptop just can't display that. But on an IMAX screen five stories tall, you're standing on the edge of the crater. You're there.

We've got some evidence, I think, of water flowing through the rocks, and changes in chemistry, I don't think we have what any of us would consider compelling evidence for surface water yet.

That kind of stuff is hard enough to drive in with six wheels, and with five it was just about impossible. It was really frustrating, being that close to the place we wanted to get to and not being able to reach it.

We'll be busy here for a long time.

In terms of sheer scenic grandeur, it is the most spectacular image we've taken. It's like nothing else on Mars.

What field geologists typically do - and Spirit is a robotic field geologist - is you climb to the top of the nearest hill and take a look around so you get the lay of the land and figure out where you want to go,

Our requirement for how far we should be able to traverse over the course of the mission, was 600 meters. These hills are five times that far away. OK, so don't sit here and think, 'Oh, we're going to go to the hills.' We're going to go 'toward' the hills.

Easy problem to find and fix, but it happened at just the wrong time and cost us data, and one more sol, ... Another first for the Mars Exploration Rover Project.

This is a journey into the unknown, to something completely new.

That was waiting to bite us. If Opportunity had landed first, it would have had the same problem.

Both rovers continue to be in superb health. It has been just a remarkable mission and I would say we literally feel on top of the world right now being on the summit of Husband Hill.

Spirit is our tough, hardworking robot. Opportunity looks like she just came off the showroom floor, clean and pretty.

We have to assume the worst... that the solar panels are going to stay dirty and just get dirtier.

I don't have a belief regarding that question.

For Spirit, we're going to head down the hill, looking for bedrock and heading toward Home Plate,

So there's enough to keep us busy here for quite a long time.

A sol like that gives you confidence. I'm really convinced now that we're able to keep the vehicle safe.

This climb was motivated by science. Every time Spirit has gained altitude, we've found different rock types. Also, we're doing what any field geologist would do in an area like this climbing to a good vantage point for plotting a route.

We think Opportunity is now parked on what was once the shoreline of a salty sea on Mars.

I actually see the Mars year anniversary as being more significant, ... We will have seen Mars over an entire seasonal cycle.

The hill is very steep in places ... and the orbital images show a lot of tasty geology, some of it in pretty nasty-looking places. All in all, the next several weeks are going to present us with some of the most interesting route-finding decisions that we've faced in a long time, on both sides of the planet.

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.

They'd had to deal with huge technical as well as financial challenges. Just to get Beagle 2 to the launch pad is a huge accomplishment.

The root cause of the reset remains a mystery, but I guess the occasional odd glitch is to be expected from a vehicle that's been on Mars for almost 600 sols.

We hope to survive another winter on Mars.

The British mountaineer George Mallory was once famously asked why he was trying to climb Mount Everest and his famous reply was 'because it is there.' That's a compelling argument when you are a mountaineer. But for an 850 million rover mission you better have a better reason than that.

Our current focus is to drive like hell and try to get Spirit to safe winter havens before the power situation gets really bad.

That very rugged stuff. There is a guy on our team who actually calls this the geologic promised land. I don't know if it's going to turn out to be that good or not and I don't know if we'll ever get there, but it certainly looks interesting.

That's no Mount Everest, but for a little rover this is a heck of a climb.

We can see most of the crater from where we are right now, and we've made the decision that we're going to traverse around it on its western side. We're actually going to start the drive around the crater by going north a little bit ... to get onto terrain that's mostly bedrock ... before we swing west.

That's no Mt. Everest, but it's a heck of a climb for our little rover, ... When we first touched down at Gusev Crater on Jan. 4, 2004, the Columbia Hills looked impossibly far away.

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.

It was a hot, violent place with volcanic explosions and impacts. Water was around, perhaps localized hot springs in some cases and trace amounts of water in other cases.

Unfortunately, recovering from something like a reset is a slow, lengthy process. You don't know what caused the problem, and the immediate concern is that whatever triggered it will do it again next time you try it. The thing you have to do is fire up each of the rover's capabilities one at a time, checking each one carefully and individually to see whether it would cause another reset or not. Standard spacecraft troubleshooting practicebut it takes time.

One mystery weve been dealing with for a long time is the origin of the little dark cobbles that we occasionally see out on the plains,

Before launch it just seemed impossibly far away, it seemed unreachable. Tonight, I go out knowing our rovers have been there a whole Martian year...it's a much more familiar planet. We know the place.