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?

[fredk]

More details in the latest planetary update. On driving in the spring:

The rover won’t even try to turn wheels again until perhaps August or September... Then, said Arvidson, even though it's got a science campaign laid out, Spirit will probably first start driving again, since it's "almost out” of its sandy snare. With only four fully functioning wheels... “a lot of it will be very difficult,” he admitted. “We're going to have to do a lot of turning about the right hand side, so we're not going to drive far. But we're not necessarily a static lander.”

Meanwhile, the engineers at JPL have already been assessing the drive capabilities with the rover replicate in the In-Situ Instrument Laboratory (ISIL), according to JPL’s Scott Lever, an MER mission manager. “We did some 4-wheel drive testing in the ISIL and did well, surprisingly well,” he said.

About the success of backwards driving:

“[The wheel] wiggles seem to have solved the problem of what's called the rolling resistance, the resistance due to the soil surrounding the wheels and just making the wheels spin in place,” Arvidson said. “The wheels couldn’t go forward because there was so much pressure resisting them. Wiggling creates the space and lowers the pressure and that's why I think we got the 34 centimeters (13.38 inches) in the last 10 drives. We were wiggling as part and parcel of that activity.” The last couple of drives, he added, were shorter, due to declining power, the reason Spirit made less progress than it did during the earlier backwards drives.

The progress made also apparently eliminated the threat of Belly Rock, the pointed rock that had been touching Spirit’s underside. “We think Belly Rock is now out from under the rover,” Laubach said.