2007 04 12, April 12th, 2007 Options

[OWW]

Good afternoon, I'm Byron Jones, one of the mission managers for the Mars rover project, here with an update for Spirit and Opportunity.

On Spirit, today is sol 1163. We've spent the last few weeks investigating an area just east of "Home Plate" where there is some interesting outcrop and other science targets. Spirit spends a few minutes every morning looking for dust devils. On Sol 1120, Spirit was able to capture a dust devil in a series of navcam frames. You can clearly see the defined column bent down in the wind direction as it moves across the Martian surface. In the next few sols, Spirit will be approaching the science target, "Madeline English." This is an outcrop where we will be deploying the instrument deployment device and investigating further.

On the other side of Mars, it's sol 1142 for Opportunity. We spent the last few months taking images inside "Victoria Crater" at the exposed cliff banding from the rim. Right now, we are just northeast of "Cape St. Vincent," where we're investigating some of the dark material you can see from MRO's orbital imaging above.

Well that's it for today. I'm Byron Jones and that's what's happening on Mars today.