Onward And Upward To The Summit Of Husband Hill

MARSDAILY

illustration only

Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 22, 2005
Spirit has made 54 meters (177 feet) of forward progress towards the summit of "Husband Hill" this past week. This is excellent progress considering Spirit is on restricted sols, so it can only drive every other sol.

(Restricted sols occur when the timing of the communications pass from the Odyssey orbiter is too late in the sol to gather vital location and health information about the rover after it executed recent commands.

The team back on Earth must wait until the next sol to find out where and how the rover is.) After sol 576's drive, the team was able to determine highest summit point, which is informally named "Summit 1."

Previously, the team believed "Summit 2" was slightly higher. Furthermore, traversing to Summit 2 was deemed difficult, so Spirit is headed towards Summit 1, which is roughly 70 meters (230 feet) away.

Power has been extremely healthy at about 875 to 900 watt-hours per sol. Spirit has been consistently using both morning and evening UHF communications passes with the Odyssey orbiter every sol, which allows the team to acquire and downlink more data.

Sol-by-sol summaries

Sol 572 (Aug. 12, 2005): Spirit performed targeted remote sensing, including panoramic camera observations with 13 filters and miniature thermal emission spectrometer stares.

Sol 573: The rover completed a 33.5-meter (109.9-foot) drive, driving backwards towards the summit. Spirit also acquired a panoramic camera mosaic.

Sol 574: Spirit performed untargeted remote sensing, including panoramic camera and navigation camera dust devil observations, pre-sunset panoramic camera imaging, and miniature thermal emission spectrometer readings.

Sol 575: Spirit did more untargeted remote sensing, including panoramic camera and navigation camera dust devil observations, panoramic camera images of the filter magnets, and miniature thermal emission spectrometer readings.

Sol 576: Spirit completed a 18.5-meter (60.7-foot) drive backwards and uphill towards the summit. After the drive, the rover made observations with its navigation camera and its miniature thermal emission spectrometer.

Sol 577: The rover looked for dust devils with its navigation camera and made other observations with the panoramic camera and miniature thermal emission spectrometer.

Sol 578 (Aug. 18, 2005): The team prepared a plan for a drive of 20 meters (66 feet) toward Summit 1.

As of the end of its 578th sol on Mars, Spirit has driven 4,742 meters (2.95 miles).

MARSDAILY

Opportunity Entering Cobble Field

Pasadena CA (JPL) Aug 19, 2005
Opportunity had a busy week! The rover has been using the rock abrasion tool and all of its spectrometers and imaging instruments. It has been healthy but slightly constrained in the flash memory.

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