"Our objective at the moment is to turn Opportunity around so that we can safely approach Purgatory Dune and investigate it with the instrument arm and with our Mini-TES instrument.

Rather than do a 180-degree turn in place -- which is possible but a little funky with a stuck right front steering actuator -- we're doing a three-point turn instead. We're partway through it now, and it's going really well... there has been very little slip, and much of the fine-grained debris that had been adhering loosely to the wheels has now fallen off. So we're very pleased with the progress so far. More progress should follow shortly.

So wait a minute, you may be thinking... Mini-TES? Wasn't the Mini-TES instrument on Opportunity malfunctioning? You may recall that the Mini-TES on Opportunity wasn't working properly awhile back, presumably due to the dangerously cold temperatures it sees each time we use Deep Sleep. But we've been keeping an eye on Mini-TES, and the last few times we've used it, the thing has worked just fine.

Something's wrong inside the instrument, but whatever it is, the problem is an intermittent one, and right now the instrument seems to be okay. We're confident that using the instrument won't make matters worse, and in a situation like that the thing to do is to use it... aggressively. So for now the Opportunity Mini-TES is back in business. We'll see what happens.

And in the "it's always something" department... we are now facing a new threat to both vehicles. It is dust storm season on Mars. Dust storm season happens once per martian year, during the southern summer when the input of solar energy into the martian atmosphere is highest. And southern summer is now upon us.

The atmospheric dust levels at both of our landing sites are high and climbing, and in fact the dust level at the Opportunity site is the highest we've ever encountered. It's not a serious threat yet, but it's a worry, and we're watching the dust levels in the atmosphere very closely.

The thing to realize about dust storms is that the threat is not high winds, nor is the primary threat dust buildup on the solar arrays. Instead, the primary threat is simply the attenuation of sunlight by dust that is suspended very high in the atmosphere, and the resultant loss of power from our solar arrays. Right now we've got power to spare on both vehicles, and there is no imminent danger.

But martian dust storms are notoriously hard to predict. In some years things are pretty quiet, and in other years what starts out as a small regional storm can blow up quickly into a monster that covers the whole planet, with solar attenuation that could be very bad for our vehicles. We have no way of knowing what's going to happen this year.

With both vehicles in such good shape, and with the solar arrays as clean as they are at the moment, we can handle a lot of atmospheric dust and come through it okay. And even if things do get very bad, there are a number of tricks we can use to save power and ride it out until the atmosphere clears. Still, we've learned that exploring Mars involves nearly constant peril, and dust storm season is looming as the next significant peril we may have to face.

earlier related report
Today (June 9) is something of a landmarks for us. As of the end of today's MER-B Command Approval Meeting, which will take place late this evening on the west coast of the US, and probably close to midnight here on the east coast, we will have planned one thousand sols on the surface of Mars... 490 for Opportunity and 510 for Spirit.

The uplink process for these vehicles is intense, engrossing and exhausting. At some point I probably should sit down and describe it in these pages. For today, though, I'll just tip my hat to all of my friends, colleagues and comrades - engineer and scientist alike - on the MER uplink team. 1000 sols is a remarkable accomplishment.

Good things are happening on both sides of the planet. At Meridiani, we'll soon begin our first maneuvers to reorient the rover so that we can study the feature that got us and then be on our way again. And the feature that got us now has a name: Purgatory Dune. We weren't calling it anything back when we were stuck in it, but now that we're out, it seemed there ought to be a name for the thing.

At Gusev, Spirit is parked at Backstay and crankin' away. Once we're done with Backstay, we're going to do a quick drive-by of Methuselah to get a little more imaging on it that'll help tell us which way the rocks are tilting. And with that done we'll be ready to move on.

If you've been reading these pages, you'll note that I haven't said yet where we're going after Methuselah. I wasn't playing games... the reality was that we hadn't decided. It's a much tougher call than you might think, because there are some very interesting outcrops down in Tennessee Valley, and some really good-looking stuff on the far wall of the valley.

But after a lot of thought we have finally decided, and the decision is to head up Husband Hill. We're not going to try a frontal assault this time. Instead, we're going to spiral up and to the right, working both upslope and also cross-slope simultaneously.

Whether we'll actually reach the summit is an open question at this point. But we're convinced that the route we've chosen offers the quickest path to a view of whatever's on the south side of the hill... and that's what we want to see next.

Related Links
Mars Rovers at JPL
Mars Rovers at Cornell
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