Spirit - 2010 Winter@Troy, The first stationary science campaign Options

[Astro0]

Well, with perhaps a few more weeks of tilt-enhancing drives to go and then settling in for the winter, I thought it might be a good time to have a thread dedicated to ideas and observations that will come. It's likely that we won't hear much from Spirit during the coldest part of winter (April-June) possibly longer. There'll hopefully be beeps to tell us that she's still alive.

Already there are plans for radio science and determining the fluidity or otherwise of the Martian core, plus weather observations, surface changes etc.
What else could you think of that Spirit could do? Remember that she's not going anywhere (vonBraun is out)

In the meantime, have you sent your postcard to Spirit yet?! It's a great idea from the Mars outreach team.
http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/spiritpostcards
What would you say to Spirit?

[Poolio]

Thinking about the "hibernation" period for Spirit some more, I have a couple questions. Forgive me if these have been covered before; I don't recall seeing anything...

Once she has "shut down" and is hibernating, is it correct to assume that Spirit will not be consuming any power? If so, wouldn't that mean that what little power the panels do generate each day (whether its 10 whr or 100) would go into charging the batteries? And if that's the case, could we expect Spirit to wake up periodically throughout the winter and try to make contact? (Even though the simple act of waking up may prompt her to trip a low-power fault again.)

During any brief periods of wakefulness, would the computers generate enough heat to provide some warmth to the WEB? And (finally!) would such temperature cycles be helpful or harmful to her chances of long term survival?

Sorry for all the hypotheticals. I know that the hibernation period has been discussed, but I don't recall seeing anything about the possible effects of cyclic sleeping and waking.