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?

[elakdawalla]

I asked Squyres about past landers during the January press briefing (when prodded to by Doug!). He said that the Viking radio system wasn't the right type to permit the precise tracking required. They had S-band radio, the rovers use X-band. I think that's the reason. They did do tracking with Pathfinder, but the mission didn't last long enough.

--Emily

[Paolo]

They had S-band radio, the rovers use X-band. I think that's the reason. They did do tracking with Pathfinder, but the mission didn't last long enough.

Results from Pathfinder were published in Interior Structure and Seasonal Mass Redistribution of Mars from Radio Tracking of Mars Pathfinder

the "superiority" MPF's (and Spirit's) X-band over Viking's S-band is explained in note 8:

The Pathfinder radio system operates at X band (8 GHz) compared with the S-band (2 GHz) radio system used by the Viking landers. The Doppler data noise caused by solar plasma is inversely proportional to the square of the radio frequency. The Pathfinder Doppler data have about 13 times less noise than the Viking lander Doppler data. The Doppler data noise is about 0.05 mm/s for data at 60-s intervals. The solar plasma also affects the round-trip range measurements. Calibrations for the solar plasma for some of the Viking lander data were determined from dual-frequency observations of the Viking orbiters. The Viking ranging data have a residual noise of ~7 m for data with orbiter calibrations and ~12 m for data with no orbiter calibrations. The Pathfinder ranging data taken so far have residuals of ~3 m.