2004 04 30, April 30th, 2004 Options

[OWW]

Hello my name is Scott Doudrick and this is the Flight Director report for the Mars Exploration Rover for sol 115 on Spirit and sol 94 on Opportunity.

On Spirit today we had a minor problem with the uplink and the day’s commandload did not get in, so we actually did a runout of preplanned science. Part of that runout was a Mini-TES observation that was very similar to the observation that we would have done for a MGS pass, Mars Global Surveyor, where we were doing science in conjunction with them and so, even though we didn’t do exactly what we wanted to do on sol 115, we did get some of the same science.
The plan for tomorrow is to do effectively what we were going to do on sol 115. 116 will be more MI images of the trench that we took three sols ago. We will then stow the arm and drive for about 50 meters directed drive and then 40 meters AutoNav.

MER-B, Opportunity, is absolutely amazing. We now have pictures from 70 meters away from Endurance crater and what we see is absolutely spectacular. You can see very clearly layering on the part of the crater that we can see. We’ve taken some Mini-TES and PanCam images.
The plan for sol 95, which is actually occurring right now, is that we will drive to 25 meters away and a great deal more PanCam and Mini-TES imaging. And so tomorrow, if you think these pictures are great, we should see some even more spectacular ones tomorrow.

This is Flight Director signing off and we’ll see you tomorrow.