2004 04 07, April 7th, 2004 Options

[OWW]

Hello, this is the Flight Director update for the Mars Exploration Rovers. My name is Chris Lewicki and I’m the Flight Director for Opportunity.

It’s sol 93 going on sol 94 at Gusev crater and Spirit is parked at Route 66 in preparation for the flight software load which will start taking place over the next several days. While we’re parked at Route 66 for this flight software load the APXS and Mossbauer instruments will be integrating at Route 66 while we spend four days uploading over a 170 files that comprise the flight software. This new flight software will improve the capabilities in driving and fixing bugs here and there with talking to our instruments. And also improve the capability of the rover for extended operations.

Opportunity is starting sol 73 at Anatolia and yesterday it completed a 54 meter drive very successfully. We ended up within centimeters of our final target. Today’s activities will include some trenching and PanCam, Mini-TES and IDD activities at our new trench. Targets include names like Denizati, Epheseus, Aegean and Black Flats.
Opportunity is also getting ready for its flight software load which will start in about a day. And that includes doing things like updating our attitude so we can point the Hight Gain Antenna very accurately. And also a calibration of that High Gain Antenna which we’ll use to upload flight software through.

And that’s what’s happening on Mars today.