Steve Squyres Quotes
With respect to how long it's going to take us to get down the hill, we don't have a whole lot of experience driving this vehicle downhill -- we've been going uphill for more than a year now. We're going to have to take it carefully at first and learn as we go. I think the deciding factor is going to be how good the geology is. If we're finding geology that offers truly compelling targets (for study) as we found on the way up, then our pace is going to be a lot slower whereas if it's a lot of loose sand and that sort of thing we'll be able to move through it a lot more briskly and head to the good stuff off in the distance.
- Steve Squyres

When we first touched down at Gusev Crater on the night of January 4, 2004, the Columbia Hills seemed impossibly far away. It was a necessary place for us to get to, though, because as we looked across the plains we quickly realized these plains were made of basaltic lava. This was stuff that was interesting but did not tell us what we really sought to know about Gusev Crater, and that is whether there had been water here. So in order to find something, in order to find something different, we had to make that mile-and-a-half drive.
- Steve Squyres

What we have found once we've gotten up into the summit region...the driving has gotten very, very good. The ground is hard here. There is not a lot of fine-grain stuff around. What there is piled up in drifts. This is because the summit region is exposed to the wind; it's very windy. In some parts of the summit region, we barely leave tracks.
- Steve Squyres

Page 1 of 9