Steve Squyres Quotations

There are cliffs the rover could fall over and die if we aren't careful. We are gong to proceed carefully and methodically.

We still want to get to the summit of Husband Hill and then head down into the 'Inner Basin' on the other side. But now we have more flexibility in how we carry out the plan. Before, it was climb or die.

We're not going to take any risks. It's a big crater in terms of diameter, but really shallow. It's nothing like Endurance.

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.

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.

We'll be busy here for a long time.

We hope to survive another winter on Mars.

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

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,

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

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.

I don't have a belief regarding that question.

But that's purely conjecture at this point à a working hypothesis. Everything is on the table until we've gotten more data down.

I have a huge amount of respect for what they've accomplished,

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

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

For the scientists, it may be a chance to look at the deepest fresh hole in the ground that we'll ever see on Mars. ... For the engineers, it's an unprecedented chance to see how a heat shield performed during entry through the martian atmosphere. There's something for everybody.

Today is day 591 of our 90-day mission to Mars.

We've been very curious to figure out what they are.

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.

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

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

It is a big step. We've really switched gears.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

We have taken a beautiful 360-degree panoramic image, which I truly believe will be one of the signature accomplishments of this mission,

We have taken a beautiful 360-degree panorama, which I believe is going to be truly one of the signature accomplishments of this mission.

We're also really getting the hang of driving in this terrain.

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.

We're using the same landing technique that Pathfinder used.

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.

The deciding factor will be how good the geology is. I think going downhill has the potential to go a bit faster, it's easier to go downhill with these vehicles than going up.

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

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.

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.

This was an inhabitable environment on Mars. This was a shallow sea. These rocks ... it's a salt flat. These are the kinds of environments that are very suitable for life.

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 we go. I think the deciding factor is going to be how good the geology is. If we're finding geology that offers truly compelling targets (for study) as we found on the way up, then our pace is going to be a lot slower whereas if it's a lot of loose sand and that sort of thing we'll be able to move through it a lot more briskly and head to the good stuff off in the distance.

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,

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

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.

Driving in that terrain was a challenge with all six wheels. With five wheels, it was a mess.

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.

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.

These look like hard outer shells on some parts of some outcrops, and theyre darker and a little redder than the rock that they encrust,

These look like hard outer shells on some parts of some outcrops, and they're darker and a little redder than the rock that they encrust.

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

Once we've finished the rest of the list, we'll start the descent.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

There's a lot of good stuff beyond it.

It's astonishing to me how well it's going. They're tough machines built by a fantastic team.

It's not like anything I've ever seen before, ... It's very weird looking stuff.

The berries are more numerous here, and some seem to be smaller than any weve ever seen. And interestingly, some dont appear to be round. Were still debating what this means, but clearly the hematite is distributed a bit differently here than it has been in any other rocks weve seen at Meridiani,

It's very similar in composition, with very similar textures when you look at it with a microscope, but it's dipping in all different directions. What it says is that the geology around here is pretty complicated.

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.

So expect to see a very big panorama from this spot.

So don't sit here and think, 'Oh, we're going to go to the hills.' We're going to go 'toward' the hills,

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

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.

I cannot tell you that we are going to reach those hills,

For Opportunity, we're going to continue south through the etched terrain, studying bedrock as we go and heading toward Victoria crater.

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

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.

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.

The launch is a milestone, but just one of many along the way. Landing historically is where the most risk is involved.

Having been given that public trust, we have a responsibility to share with the public.

My style of leadership is to lead with the lightest touch that I possibly can.

We didn't know if the rover could climb up or down the hills of the crater.

What we initially conceived as a fairly simple geologic experiment on Mars ultimately turned into humanity's first real overland expedition across another planet. Spirit explored just as we would have, seeing a distant hill, climbing it, and showing us the vista from the summit. And she did it in a way that allowed everyone on Earth to be part of the adventure.

We have concluded that the rocks here were once soaked in liquid water. It changed their texture, and it changed their chemistry. We've been able to read the tell-tale clues the water left behind, giving us confidence in that conclusion.

There's no way to actually turn the rover off.

I can't ever remember not wanting to be a scientist.

The rocks, to a great extent, look swept clean. It's a much cleaner surface than what we had a right to hope for.

That's really what science is just trying to figure stuff out, and I like figuring stuff out.

Is there water still on Mars? I don't have a view on that because we don't have good data to answer that question. One of the biggest mistakes you can make if you're a scientist is to think you know the answer, or wish for a certain answer, before you actually have it.

These rovers are living on borrowed time. We're so past warranty on them. You try to push them hard every day because we're living day to day.

Mars is telling us something. I'm not sure what it is because It's speaking martian. But it's telling us something

I want to make as many people as possible feel like they are part of this adventure. We are going to give everybody a sense of what exploring the surface of another world is really like.

The thing that sets Mars apart is that it is the one planet that is enough like Earth that you can imagine life possibly once having taken hold there.