Rover vehicle heads for Mars, has Utah touches

"YAHOO!"

The exclamation came from Patrick Wiggins, NASA solar system ambassador to Utah, shortly after the space agency launched a rover vehicle toward Mars on Tuesday. Similar yells could have echoed throughout northern Utah, from the mouths of many who built the booster rockets or worked on part of the rover.

"We had hundreds of people touch these products in locations in Utah in which we operate," said Jeff Foote, president of ATK Aerospace, headquartered in Salt Lake City.

The rover, named Spirit, is the first of two identical robot explorers due to arrive on the red planet on Jan. 3, 2004. The second, Opportunity, is scheduled for liftoff late this month.

The six-wheeled vehicles will roam across the surface of Mars, sending back color stereoscopic photos and making geological studies. Each is equipped with navigation cameras, panoramic cameras, a mini-temperature detector, a rock abrasion tool, spectrometers and a microscopic imager.

Each should operate on Mars for at least three months, checking the planet's geology and looking for clues about whether Mars had water at any time in the past.

If the planet ever had water, scientists say, life might have developed there.

Their computer programming should allow them to check their own routes without constant input from Earth. Each should be able to travel six to 10 times as far as the 1997 lander, "Sojourner," which drove about the length of a football field from its mother craft.

Tuesday's launch came after two straight days of delay caused by stormy weather over Cape Canaveral, Fla. But when liftoff finally happened, the Delta II rocket and its strap-on boosters thundered aloft in a glorious launch that soon brought the craft to a parking orbit above Earth.

Before completing one orbit, the second stage reignited to begin the seven-month trip to Mars.

"It's step one of the mission, and we got a good launch today," said Foote, who watched a transmission of the launch. "It was beautiful to see."

The start of the trip went of without a hitch, he added. "After about 30 minutes of boost and coast, the spacecraft is now on its way to Mars."

ATK Thiokol Propulsion's Magna plant manufactured the nine solid rocket boosters that helped power the Delta II into space. The outer casings on the boosters, made of graphite-epoxy, were made at ATK Composites in Clearfield.