2006 05 25, May 25th, 2006 Options

[OWW]

Good morning. My name is Joel Signorelli and this is the flight director report for the 25th of May.

For Opportunity it’s sol 830. Opportunity’s making very good progress on its trek towards ‘Victoria Crater’. We’re now less than 1000 meters from the rim of the crater. The area is quite beautiful actually. It looks like the desert southwest where it’s got kind of like cobbled rock on the ground with ripples of sand on top.
What we’ve been doing is driving for a sol and stopping for another sol or two and using our pancam and Mini-TES to take what’s called remote sensing observations of just objects. Last week, we stopped the rover and we sampled soil called ‘Almogordo Creek’. We deployed the instrument arm onto the soil and did some scientific observations of the soil.
Now Opportunity is also doing communication tests with the Odyssey orbiter which is in orbit around Mars. Now these tests are in support of the next NASA lander which is going to arrive at Mars in 2008 and that is called the Phoenix project.

Now for Spirit on the other side on Mars, it’s sol 850. Spirit’s making very good progress in its winter science campaign. And right now it’s doing what’s called a ‘McMurdo Pan’. A McMurdo Pan is a 360 degree panorama in full color and high resolution. These aren’t done very frequently on the vehicle, but when they are done they are very beautiful.
Now this panorama should take a little bit longer than most have in the past on Spirit, because the amount of solar energy available to the vehicle to do science is getting less and less each day. But once it’s done it should be very spectacular.

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