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Posted by: alan Jul 18 2006, 01:58 AM

Good morning. My name is Joel Signorelli and this is the flight directors update for the 13th of July.

The focus of the past few weeks on both vehicles has been to finish the file upload in support of the upcoming flight software update. Now we have been sending files to both spacecraft using one or two ways. The first one is direct from Earth where we use the antennas from the Deep Space Network to send files. The second way is a relay method where we use the Mars Odyssey spacecraft, which is currently in orbit around Mars to downlink files to both rovers. As it stands today Opportunity has finished its uplink of all 200 files and Spirit has one more to go.

On Opportunity, its sol878 and over the past two weeks we got around 180 meters worth of progress on our drive. But as we get closer to the ”Victoria Crater” annulus, the materials surrounding Victoria Crater becomes a little more sandy and that’s making driving a little more difficult. For example, on sol 873, the rover was crossing a sand ripple and it sensed that its wheels were slipping too much and terminated the drive. Since then we backed off and we’re taking another approach to our intermediate goal which is “Beagle Crater.”

For Spirit, its sol 898 and we are about three weeks from the beginning of the harshest, coldest part of the Martian winter. Spirit does continue on its winter science campaign. One of the things that it is doing is using its MiniTes instrument to look at around 100 different targets out there. Now MiniTes is a Mini Thermal Emission Spectrometer and it looks at targets and features In the infrared portion of the spectrum. Scientists using this information can actually determine the mineralogy of these rocks and soils without even touching them. In keeping with the winter theme, the scientists are naming targets features after people and places associated with Antartica.

Well that’s it for today, my name is Joel Signorelli and that’s what’s been happening on Mars.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jul 18 2006, 02:02 AM

QUOTE (alan @ Jul 17 2006, 03:58 PM)

Posted by: dvandorn Jul 18 2006, 02:14 AM

Ummm... you are joking, right, Alex?

-the other Doug

Posted by: alan Jul 18 2006, 02:52 AM

Oops, forgot to mention that since OWW missed the last update I decided to get this one for him.

Posted by: AlexBlackwell Jul 18 2006, 04:44 PM

QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 17 2006, 04:14 PM)

Posted by: alan Jul 18 2006, 04:52 PM

I only work for JPL in my dreams.