Just chatted with Mark Lemmon -- he said that as of this morning he's declaring the Mission Success Pan to be complete (

James, you're really fast What is you secret ?

Yes, this is most likely part of the (Re)Peter Pan and probably would be more fitting in that thread.

Great imagery James Canvin & Astro0.

My own thoughts are that the first 360 pans should have been the priority for the first few sols, before unstowing the arm & digging. That arm is quite an intrusion.

Can I ask, what software was used & is it expensive?

The dust factor, a measure of the proportion of sunlight penetrating the coating of dust on the solar arrays, has remained almost unchanged at 0.349 (meaning that 34.9 percent of the sunlight, direct and scattered, that reaches the arrays penetrates the dust layer to generate electricity).

Energy has been steady, averaging about 226 watt-hours each Martian day, or sol, and varying by only a couple of watt-hours. This is due in large part to a clear and stable atmosphere.

Tau, a measure of dust in the atmosphere, has ranged from 0.178 to 0.207 and averaged 0.193. As a result, between 81 percent and 84 percent of the sunlight reaching Mars continues down through the atmosphere to Spirit's solar array. (The remaining 16 percent to 19 percent is either scattered or absorbed by dust particles in the atmosphere. The portion of sunlight that's scattered also contributes to Spirit's solar array energy.)

A Tau this low means the skies above Spirit are remarkably clear. Not only that, Tau has decreased by an average of about 0.01 per week over the last month. (Though scattering and absorption are different and not exactly comparable, a clear mountain day on Earth has a Tau of 0.1-0.2.)

They now think they understand the problem with the TEGA doors, that it is a mechanical problem, that an assembly "was not fabricated to flight specifications." However they still think they can get samples in, and plan to try it on sol 30 or 31.