34 Outer Space Rocks! Enhancing the Understanding of our Planetary Neighbors

Sunday, 30 March 2025
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
120

YOU AND YOUR STUDENTS CAN STUDY ROCKS ON MARS USING SPACE ROBOTS! A DEMONSTRATION OF THE MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS PORTAL TO OBSERVATIONS, RESOURCES, AND TOOLS TO ADVANCE LEGACY SCIENCE (MER PORTAL)

Paper number: 34-2
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 8:05 AM – 8:25 AM

Authors

Abstract

Spirit and Opportunity, the Mars Exploration Rovers, roamed the surface of Mars for over 6 and 14 years, respectively, acquiring compositional spectra and nearly 350,000 images of the rocks, soils, landscapes, and celestial and atmospheric phenomena they encountered. Throughout the mission, the MER team focused on both mission operations and data analysis. Only the “low-hanging fruit” studies have been conducted – there is plenty for you to do!

Because these first long-distance explorers of the Red Planet launched in 2003, when Google was only 5 years old, iPhones were 4 years away, and 256MB (only a quarter of a gigabyte) of flash memory was a lot of storage for robots heading to Mars on a ~90-day mission, the team could not envision the search features that people now take for granted; modern expectations for data accessibility did not exist. Spirit and Opportunity’s data are stored in the Planetary Data System (PDS) and are accessible through the MER Analyst’s Notebook, which is aimed at experienced planetary scientists and is optimized for mission team members.

The goal of the MER PORTAL is to broaden access to MER data by developing the documentation, tools, and search infrastructure necessary to enable anyone to find and use MER data. Our Accessibility Consultant is ensuring that we go beyond the minimum accessibility requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to enable people with a wide range of abilities, disabilities, and accessibility requirements to access and use these data, and our Translation Team will ensure that the PORTAL is available in Spanish as well as English.

In Phase 1 of the project, we are developing

  • Data analysis user guides
  • Guides to the MER vehicle and instruments
  • A handbook for interpreting MER images, with associated college-level lesson plans
  • A bibliography of online tools and websites relevant to MER data analysis and the MER mission
  • A gallery of favorite MER images

Future plans include

  • An intuitive, science-based search of MER data, capable of downloading data products from the PDS
  • Contextual information and data quality indicators for data products
  • Visualization and sonification tools

In this presentation we will demonstrate the preliminary MER PORTAL website (https://mer-portal.spacescience.org) so you and your students can start studying Mars with Spirit and Opportunity.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 3

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025NE-407771

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