The Spirit of Exploration September, 2005: In the scene above the Spirit rover is on the top of a Martian hill looking out at the view. The same pioneering spirit that propelled my great-great-grandparents into the American West is alive and well today on Mars. The pioneers in the scene are celebrating reaching the summit and seeing what's on the other side. Right now we may be seeing the greatest generation of Mars explorers in history because they are the first to find answers to some very big questions - what a team! And what a time for me to be there, with them. It's the luckiest thing that's happened to me yet at JPL.

Jan. 2004: That's me having fun at the Planetary Society's Wild About Mars event celebrating the landing of Spirit.

Between April and June, 2004, my JPL office was on one of the three MER project floors so I got an insider's look at the people and activities of the most successful Mars project of our time . . . at least until the next one!      Wayne Lee post-landing interview Spirit's Landing, Jan. 4, 2004   Opportunity Landing, Jan. 24, 2004       Martian dust devil captured on film by Spirit     Surface Mobility      Opportunity trenching   Sunset   Opportunity watches sunset at Meridiani Planum   Martian Moons Eclipse the Sun   Animations from March, 2004: Spirit snapped the larger Martian moon Phobos passing in front of the Sun on Sol 45, left and Opportunity captured the smaller moon Deimos as it "transited" the Sun on Sol 39, right. The most historic events I've experienced at JPL A week after the landing Vice-Pres. Cheney visited in person to thank us - it was simply amazing! Then a few days after that President Bush made his dramatic announcement at NASA HQ that the US would begin a long-term human exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond. And it all had to do with the success of our rover. Those early January days of 2004 were extraordinary even by normal JPL standards! It was an enormous risk trying to land two big, expensive rovers on Mars. But we succeeded and helped give birth to a new national space policy in the process. I don't think anything will ever top that experience for me as long as I stay at JPL. Lesson learned: don't be afraid to take big risks and then do the very best you possibly can and you could change the course of history.       My July 2004 geology trip to Greenland A personal quest for ancient rocks on a cold arctic island While our two robotic field geologists Spirit and Opportunity were performing so brilliantly on Mars I set out for the Arctic island of Greenland in search of rare fluorescent minerals. It was my turn to play field geologist and I worked very hard at it. I wanted to show my fellow Greenland adventurers that I, too, had "the right stuff" Well, it turns out that I made a discovery in Greenland that none of the others had made in 5 years of collecting there! The trip leader was suitably impressed when I showed him my specimens of what is probably the rare mineral called tundrite. Never mind that I was only "the artist" - that first minute when I saw the strange, fossil-like specimen was every bit as exciting for me as when the Opportunity rover identified the evidence of past water on Earth. I was an American explorer in a strange and distant world - although in my case I was also very conscious that I, too, was "roving" in the old Viking explorer tradition. For that reason sometimes while exploring in Greenland I even wore a "modern Viking" outift as you will see if you click on the link above.     Spirit and Opportunity on Mars         See the latest pictures from Spirit and Opportunity in the Planetary Photojournal    Mars Rovers JPL website   MER Color Stereo Images of Gusev Crater and Meridiani Planum

MER - the early days

Evolution of a rover: Left: my old artwork showing what was then called the 2001 Athena rover. The Athena eventually became the Mars Exploration Rover. Right: I created this image of a 2003 rover that accompanied the surprise announcement that NASA Headquarters had decided to send two rovers, not just one, on August 10, 2000.

The Mars Exploration Rover model at Cornell

That's astrogeologist Jim Bell next to the MER model. The 2003 rovers are considerably bigger and more capable than little Sojourner. They're serving as field geologists: traveling around on the surface for quite a distance in search of interesting and revealing rocks and minerals. The science instruments on Spirit and Opportunity are fantastic.

You can follow the development of the science instruments and specialized hardware with these links. MER ATHENA instruments site, Cornell University MER Microscopic Imager, USGS Astrogeology Research Program Mini-TES (Mini-Thermal Emission Spectrometer), Arizona State University Mössbauer Spectrometer, Johanes Gutenberg University Mars Exploration Program, JPL

Landing site selection was a very important task. The trick was to find two safe landing sites within the designated equatorial region that are still geologically interesting. You may click on the landing site link above to learn more about the site selection process but it's very technical.