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]

Wow, Doug, thanks for all the relevant info. I will delve into those documents in my copious free time (!), but the quote you highlighted and your follow-on comments were very illuminating.

So the rover does consume a minimal amount of power and the BCB "stays awake" even during hibernation. This also explains questions I had about how the rover wakes up -- what triggers the event that prompts the comm attempt. This must be different from Phoenix who suffered no sunlight and therefore no power for many months. I assume that if you dropped Spirit into the arctic circle at winter, she would become irrevocably dead.

The excerpt also sheds some light on the latest JPL update that talks about adjusting the comm window for the winter. And somehow I never knew that the rovers had RHU's in their bellies.... So there are 8 RHU's generating 1 W each. Winter temps are expected to reach -40C. Does anyone know what the resulting temperature would be in the WEB given these parameters?