ITHACA, N.Y. — Culminating a six-year development and building
process led by Cornell University’s Steven Squyres, the second of two
Mars-bound clusters of scientific instruments, called the Athena
payload, arrived March 11 at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape
Canaveral, Fla.

The instruments will ride aboard NASA’s twin Mars Exploration Rovers,
scheduled for separate launches beginning May 30 and June 25.

“I’ve poured my heart and soul into this project, and the instruments
feel almost like children to me. Starting in two weeks or so, the
rovers will each be put onto their respective landers, the petals
surrounding them will be closed and we’ll never see them again,” says
Squyres, Cornell professor of astronomy and the principal
investigator for the Athena science payload. “It’s going to feel
strange to say goodbye.”

Carried as the science payload on each of the rovers, the Athena
instruments promise to provide the most vivid images and to conduct
the most comprehensive geologic examination yet of the Martian
surface. The mission seeks to determine the history of the planet’s
climate while looking for sites that provide evidence of whether
water once flowed and whether life once might have been possible.

“This will be a whole new experience for Martians like us,” says
James Bell, Cornell assistant professor of astronomy and payload
element lead for the panoramic cameras, known as Pancams, carried by
both rovers as part of the Athena packages. The cameras will provide
high-resolution, 20/20 images, Bell says. “With this camera, we’ll be
able to capture the planet’s sweeping landscapes and beautiful
vistas. We don’t know exactly what it will look like where we land,
so we’ll need the Pancam to help decide which way to go.”

The airbag-enclosed, pyramid-shaped landers carrying the rovers will
bounce onto the Martian surface three weeks apart next January. After
that, the rovers will explore the surface through the winter and
spring of 2004, each lasting 90 Martian days, or “sols” (a Martian
sol is slightly longer than an Earth day). The rovers might be
capable of traveling up to 100 yards per sol under ideal conditions,
which is as far as NASA’s Sojourner rover traveled during its entire
mission in 1997.

In addition to the Pancam, the Athena instruments include a
microscopic imager, three spectrometers (Mössbauer, alpha
particle X-ray and infrared) and a rock abrasion tool, or RAT, to
scrape away the outer layers of Martian rock. Other institutions that
have helped build the payload include NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory (JPL), the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State
University, Honeybee Robotics, the University of Mainz in Germany,
the Max Planck Institut für Chemie in Mainz and the University
of Copenhagen. JPL, in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Exploration
Rover mission.

Squyres and his research team have collaborated with engineers from
JPL to integrate the Athena payloads with the rovers and to verify
that the instruments can withstand the airbag landing, patterned on
the Mars Pathfinder mission six years ago.

Additionally, the Athena team of more than 120 scientists from the
United States, Germany, Denmark and other nations needed to prove
that the instruments will work at frigid temperatures in the planet’s
meager atmosphere. It is common for Martian nights to dip to minus 90
degrees Centigrade (minus130 degrees Fahrenheit). “On the Martian
surface there’s a huge change in temperature from day to night. The
instruments will expand and contract, so we put a lot of effort into
thermal testing,” says Squyres. Final testing of the Athena
instruments will take place over the coming weeks at Cape Canaveral.

A full-scale rover model is on display at the Sciencenter, a science
museum in Ithaca. In May, the model will move to its permanent home
at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in
Washington, D.C.

On a bulletin board outside Squyres’ Cornell office is a countdown to
the first launch. With the instruments safely at Cape Canaveral,
Squyres is relieved. “We’ve got a date with a rocket in May and
June,” he says. “The planets are lining up, and it’s time to head for
Mars.”