2004 03 19, March 19th, 2004 Options

[OWW]

Hello, I’m George Chen, Flight Director of MER-A Spirit with the Flight Director report for Friday March 19th 2004.

Today is sol 54 on Opportunity. Opportunity is operating very well still in the Opportunity crater in Meridiani. Today the main activity was a trenching activity that was done pretty close to the lander. In the image over my left shoulder here you can see the trench that was dug by the rover wheel, so what we did was we went pretty close to the lander, turned and used the front wheel to kind of dig a trench to look what’s underneath the soil there.
So, the plan for tomorrow is not quite done yet, but I presume we’re gonna be doing some IDD activity putting the Microscopic Imager and the spectrometer down onto that trench to see what’s underneath the top of the soil there.

On the other side of the planet, in Gusev crater, it is sol 75 for MER-A Spirit. We’re still just getting started today. The sun is just getting up at this time so we haven’t quite started today’s activities.
Yesterday however we had a very productive day. We finished the spectrometer integration. We had some Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer work and Mossbauer work that we did at ‘Serpent Dunes’. And then we drove about six meters away to another part of the dune and did some what we call ‘scuffing’ again. So what we did was we drove up onto the dune and then turn the rover several times to kinda dig down underneath the surface of the dune. Then we drove another three meters away and then used our cameras and looked over our shoulders and took a look at what was underneath the top layer of that dune there. Then we proceeded to drive further south along the rim of Bonneville crater and the total traverse was over 34 meters yesterday so we got quite aways.
Today the plan is to continue driving along the rim of the crater and the plan you can see over my right shoulder here is kind of a zigzag path to avoid some obstacles. But then we’ll be driving another possibly around 26 meters further to the south along that crater.

And that’s about it. That’s what's going on on Mars today.