Steve Squyres Hills Quotations

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.

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

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.

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.

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.