Squyres, an astronomer at Cornell University, is principal investigator for both Mars rovers. He said controllers' efforts to release Opportunity have yielded positive results.

"We had a very good weekend," Squyres told SpaceDaily.com, "in which the final sol's drive yielded 28 centimeters of rover motion. That's very substantial progress, and we're all expecting the rover to be free and ready to continue southward (toward Victoria) within the next few days."

Meanwhile, he said, Spirit is doing fine after the scare earlier this year that its defective right-front wheel would prevent the rover from reaching a sunward-facing slope on which to accumulate enough power for its solar cells to keep operating during the Martian winter.

"We're about two-thirds of the way through the McMurdo pan now," Squyres said, meaning the 360-degree panoramic view the rover's cameras are compiling in one little corner of Gusev Crater.

Spirit also is "doing well on the progressive soil brushing experiment," he said. "In this experiment, we brush a little bit of soil away with the RAT (rock-abrasion tool), look at the result with the spectrometers, brush a little more soil away, and so forth. It's the first chance we've ever had to do fine-scale stratigraphy in the soil."

Other activities by Spirit include analyzing dozens of surrounding rocks "with Mini-TES, our infrared spectrometer," he said. It turns out "that there's quite a bit of variety in the composition of the rocks at this location."

Squyres said as soon as the McMurdo pan is done, "we're going to look at possibly turning the rover to the right a bit. If we do that, it should bring both some wheel tracks and some finely-layered bedrock within reach of the arm."

Asked about the dangers of dust devils to the rovers, he said the atmospheric density on Mars "is so low that the dynamic pressure exerted by the wind, even in a dust devil, is very low. Also, dust devils are prevalent in the summer on Mars, and right now it's winter."

Squyres denied that anyone at Jet Propulsion Laboratory - which manages the rover missions for NASA � has been taking bets the rovers will keep operating until their successor, the Mars Science Laboratory, arrives in four years.

The Volkswagen-sized rover is designed to spend two years roaming the Martian surface � compared to 90 days for Spirit and Opportunity, which have been operating almost continuously for 28 months.

Asked if there would be any reason for the new rover to visit one or the other of its predecessors, Squyres replied: "I don't think so, for two reasons. First, Mars is a big planet, and there are lots of other interesting places for MSL to explore besides Gusev and Meridiani."

Second, he said, the MSL "has some significant targeting uncertainty in its entry, descent and landing system, and it wouldn't be able to land right next to either Spirit or Opportunity even if we tried to."

Squyres noted that even during an attempt at a deliberate rendezvous, "MSL would have to do a kilometers-long drive just to get to (either Spirit or Opportunity), and it's such a valuable machine that its time would probably be better spent doing science."

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