2004 04 23, April 23rd, 2004 Options

[OWW]

Hello, it’s April 23rd and this is the update for the Mars Exploration Rovers. My name is Chris Lewicki and I’m working on Spirit today.

Spirit is in the midst of a number of driving sols. We’ve arrived at Missoula crater and now are driving around its rim on our way to the Columbia hills. Yesterday in our driving we broke the one kilometer milestone. We drove 38 meters and the sol before that we drove 70, so we’ve been doing lots of driving. We’re planning on doing another 80 or so meters tomorrow and should continue to rack up the miles on the odometer.
While we’re going around Missoula crater we’re taking the opportunity to survey the lot with all our instrumentation, PanCam, Mini-TES, and we’ll continue to do that as we’re driving around.

On the other side of the planet, Opportunity is backing off from Fram crater. It succeeded in RAT-ting a hole on the target Gulf and Termite and has achieved the deepest RAT hole we’ve made on Mars yet, 7.2 millimeters in a little under a 2.5 hours. It’s now backed off that and driven about 33 meters away from Fram crater and made a little scuff which the IDD will be studying tomorrow, before starting our drive to Endurance crater.

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