26 Old Collections, New Tricks

This session highlights how re-examination and contemporary analysis of geoscience collections (i.e., rock, fossil, and archival collections, or geologic maps) can advance science, rewrite historical narratives, and contribute to discussions on social justice.

Monday, 23 March 2026
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
CCC, Room 25

The Mars Exploration Rovers Portal to Observations, Resources, and Tools to Advance Legacy Science (MER PORTAL): Enabling Current and Future Scientists to Study Mars with the Spirit and Opportunity Rovers

Paper number: 26-3
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 2:15 PM – 2:35 PM

Authors

Abstract

The Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), Spirit and Opportunity, left Earth in 2003 and operated on Mars from 2004 to 2010 (Spirit) and 2018 (Opportunity). Together, these robotic explorers accumulated a total of over 20 years (over 7,000 sols (martian days)) of daily data from multiple instruments. Due to the longevity of the mission, which was originally planned to last only 3 months, and its unexpected overlap with other planetary missions, the scientists on the mission team have only analyzed the “low-hanging fruit” of this treasure trove of data. There is plenty left to analyze!

The MER collection is housed in the Geosciences, Imaging, Atmospheres, and Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) Nodes of NASA’s Planetary Data System (PDS). This online data repository is freely accessible through the PDS node websites, and the data on the Geosciences Node is additionally accessible through the MER Analyst’s Notebook (AN). The AN greatly facilitates data discovery for scientists who are familiar with the mission details, but both the PDS and the MER AN can be a barrier to entry for those who don’t know, e.g., the day of mission that their data of interest was acquired. The presenting author, who was on the MER Science Team and has been working with MER data for nearly 20 years, was unable to determine the number of data products or volume of data in the PDS MER collection using the PDS and AN. It is roughly of order several million data products and several TB of data.

MER PORTAL arose from the idea that everyone should be able to find and use MER data. We aim to remove barriers of entry to the rich MER datasets by 

·      Documenting the instruments and datasets at a level accessible to workers new to MER analysis 

·      Developing lesson plans for use in undergraduate courses 

·      Cataloging geologic and atmospheric features apparent in image data 

·      Augmenting data products with data quality indicators and contextual information 

·      Providing the capability to search archived data products using user-friendly, descriptive terms such as location, target name, and rock or soil class 

·      Creating interactive data exploration and visualization tools 

We invite you explore the MER PORTAL as we continue to develop it at https://mer-portal.spacescience.org/

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 2

doi: 10.1130/abs/2026NE-411217

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