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NEW SCIENTIST
An emotional roller-coaster of a weekend for the sleep-deprived teams running NASA's Mars rovers ended in euphoria with Opportunity landing safely and its ailing twin Spirit apparently on the mend.
Opportunity's landing, like that of Spirit, was flawless. Every system worked as expected, the landing was unusually gentle, all of the rover's systems passed their initial checkout and a black-and-white panorama of the scene arrived at mission control at the earliest possible communications link.
Furthermore, the small crater in which Opportunity touched down appears to be a geologist's dream. Its smooth and rock-free surface will make driving as easy as possible and straight ahead of a forward ramp lies a large outcrop of bedrock. This is the very thing geologists have been hoping to study but have never before seen on the Martian surface in an accessible place.
It is too soon to say whether this bedrock is sedimentary or volcanic, but it is only about 10 metres away and the rover is fully equipped to find out. Identifying whether Mars has sedimentary rocks - and thereby proving whether it once had long-standing bodies of water - is a primary goal of the rovers' mission.
That question now seems to be within weeks of a possible definitive answer. "It's Martian pay dirt," said science team member Larry Soderblom, of the US Geological Survey. "We have a scientific jackpot."
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