I’m driving a buggy across Mars. It’s called Spirit. It’s a bumpy ride. I dodge small rocks scattered across the red landscape. I roll right over others. Well, to be honest, I’m not actually on
Mars. But Spirit is. I’m on Earth, controlling Spirit from a computer. I can see through Spirit’s cameras. I can tell it to turn and stop. T en I can ask it to dig up soil, test it, and send me the data. Now that’s remote control!
Solar System Lessons My job is really out of this world—literally. As a planetary geologist, I explore the geology of space objects in our solar system. I can’t go to any of these places. So tools
like Spirit, plus what I know about Earth’s geology, help me understand what I see in space. It’s a fun challenge. On Earth, we can get up close to landforms. We oſt en can touch them, take samples, and measure them. It’s diff erent in space. We have to use tools
such as spacecraſt and rovers to gather data remotely. T en we interpret that data. It helps us measure and analyze what we see in space. Back on Mars, Spirit rolls up to a hole in
the ground. It looks like a vent of a volcano on Earth. An analysis of the soil confirms that’s what it is. We find traces of the same chemicals that we find in volcanoes on Earth. T is tells us about Mars’ history. Volcanoes once erupted here. Like that vent, we oſt en find landforms in
space that seem strangely familiar. By using data to compare them to formations on Earth, we oſt en can figure out how their look-alikes in space formed.
Tools at the end of Spirit’s arm collect soil samples.
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MERCURY We’ll go to Mercury for our first comparison. Most people think this planet is a lifeless rock. Yet its geology once was fairly dynamic. We learned about Mercury’s geology when
the Messenger spacecraſt flew by. Its wide-angle cameras captured exciting images. We saw what looked like a massive fault, or crack, cutting across a crater. A fault can form when forces break big chunks of rock in a planet’s crust. T is action can form mountains, and sometimes cliff s. On Mercury, it formed a big cliff called Beagle Rupes. We used data from the images to measure the cliff . It’s 600 km long. Beagle Rupes looks like the Chinese Wall, a
cliff along a fault on Earth. At 452 km, this fault is almost as long as Beagle Rupes. We wondered if the two places formed in the same way.
The Shrinking Planet On Earth, the movement of the rocky tectonic plates that make up our crust can form a fault. T at’s what happened at the Chinese Wall. Two plates collided. T e pressure cracked the rock, and thrust a slab of rock on top of other rock. Mercury has no tectonic plates. Instead, we
think the planet shrank as its core cooled. Its crust cracked. Rock shiſt ed. On both planets, these faults can create some amazing cliff s.
Spirit’s cameras take images of Mars.
Two antennae send and receive data.
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