Spirit Heading To 'Home Plate'

MARSDAILY

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 09, 2006
Last week Spirit completed robotic-arm work on "El Dorado." The rover used all three of its spectrometers plus the microscopic imager for readings over the New Year's weekend.

The team planned drive sols the following four days, and Spirit successfully made 198 meters (650 feet) of progress on the way to "Home Plate."

On sol 715, Spirit enters restricted sols and will be able to drive only every other day, so the team made a large effort to maximize driving prior to this. (Restricted sols occur when the timing of the communications pass from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter is too late in the day 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.)

Sol-by-sol summaries

Sol 708 (Dec. 30, 2006): Spirit used the Moessbauer spectrometer, miniature thermal emission spectrometer and panoramic camera to study El Dorado.

Sol 709: Spirit used the Moessbauer spectrometer, microscopic imager and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to study El Dorado.

Sol 710: Spirit took pictures of "Edgar" with the microscopic imager, placed the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on Edgar, and studied El Dorado with the panoramic camera and alpha particle X-ray spectrometer.

Sol 711 and 712: On sol 711, Spirit drove 56 meters (184 feet) toward Home Plate using blind driving and autonomous navigation. The autonomous-navigation portion of the drive terminated early because the rover could not find a safe path, and a limit cycle was detected. Due to the limit cycle check and automatic drive termination on sol 711, Spirit did not resume driving on sol 712.

Sol 713: Spirit drove 80 meters (263 feet). Spirit received stall warnings on the left front steer motor on hard left turns, however this did not end the drive.

Sol 714: Spirit drove 62 meters (203 feet). The team performed a steering test of the left front steering actuator because of the prior stall warnings. Preliminary results show no more stall warnings.

As of sol 714 (Jan. 5, 2006), Spirit's total odometry is 6,031 meters (3. 75 miles).

MARSDAILY

Bird's Eye View Of Opportunity At Erebus

Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 5, 2006
This view combines frames taken by the panoramic camera (Pancam) on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on the rover's 652nd through 663rd Martian days, or sols (Nov. 23 to Dec. 5, 2005), at the edge of "Erebus Crater."