Finding Spirit

When the Spirit rover landed on 3 January 2004, one of the first things NASA wanted to know was "Where did Spirit land?" Spirit’s landing system included a camera that took three pictures showing the area around the spacecraft as it descended. By combining the descent images with the engineering data sent by the spacecraft, Spirit’s controllers were able to determine exactly where the spacecraft came to rest, relative to a recognizable pattern of craters that were nearby.

The problem is that these craters are too small to appear on most maps of Mars! Fortunately, NASA also had the Mars Odyssey spacecraft in orbit around Mars. Using Odyssey’s Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) camera, we can image both the small craters seen in the descent images and the larger craters that will help us find Spirit on a map of Mars.

As students move through the five images in this activity, they see more and more of Mars – almost as though their view were zooming out. While their task is to use these images to find the latitude and longitude of Spirit’s landing site, the same process is the same for locating any lander on Mars.

This activity is suitable for grades 5 through 12.

Lesson Plan (.pdf) 53 KB

Student Answer Sheets (.pdf) 512 KB

Images for Pattern Activity (.pdf) 17 MB

Images for Range and Bearing Activity (.pdf) 17 MB

Image Answer Sheets (.pdf) 17 MB