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Spirit Has Good And Bad News
Pasadena CA (SPX) May 18, 2009 Spirit is embedded in loose, soft terrain on the west side of Home Plate. There is a real risk the rover may be high-centered (underside touching) on a small mound of rocks right under the belly of the rover. Additionally, a left wheel motor stall occurred during the last rover motion on Sol 1899 (May 6, 2009). No motion has been commanded since. The project is engaged in a recovery activity. This involves extensive remote sensing observations by the rover of the local soil characteristics, and ground testing using the surface system testbed rover in the sandbox at JPL. There has been no recurrence of the anomalous behavior that happened between Sol 1872 (April 9, 2009) and Sol 1881 (April 18, 2009). There is still no explanation for the previous anomalies, and the investigation is continuing. The week provided more good news about solar array energy. Spirit experienced yet another substantial solar array dust cleaning event. On Sol 1900 (May 7, 2009), energy production improved by about 30 percent. With the significant improvement in energy, the rover can now support morning UHF relay passes, which will help with the backlog of collected data onboard. The Mars Odyssey project has made special efforts to support this additional relay. As of Sol 1905 (May 13, 2009), solar array energy production is estimated around 652 watt-hours, with atmospheric opacity (tau) at 0.774. The dust factor has improved substantially to 0.678, meaning that 67.8 percent of sunlight hitting the solar array penetrates the layer of dust on the array. As of Sol 1906 (May 14, 2009), Spirit's total odometry remains 7,729.93 meters (4.80 miles). Share This Article With Planet Earth
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Spirit rover stuck in Martian soil: NASALos Angeles (AFP) May 12, 2009 NASA's Spirit rover, which has been exploring Mars for evidence of water, has gotten stuck, perhaps inextricably, in the soft Martian soil, said officials from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "Spirit is in a very difficult situation. We are proceeding methodically and cautiously," JPL's John Callas, project manager for Spirit and its twin rover, Opportunity, s ... read more |
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