2004 06 22, June 22nd, 2004 Options

[OWW]

Welcome to the Mars Exploration Rover Flight Director report for June 22nd 2004. My name is George Chen, I’m Flight Director for MER-A Spirit.

Today is sol 167 for MER-A Spirit. We have been working in an area that at in the foothills of Columbia hills and we spent the last few sols trying to get into position to do some IDD arm work on a target known as ‘Pot of Gold’. This is a particularly interesting target because there is some evidence of the blueberry nodules that was found on the MER-B site on the other side of the planet and that has been giving us some evidence that was some water here at this location so we’re very interested in getting up to this area called ‘Pot of Gold’. It has been difficult getting up to this rock because of the changing slopes as we approach the rock, so there’s been a lot of slippage of the rover as we drive upto the target. So it’s been taking a few days to get up close enough so that the arm can reach it. It looks like we probably have to move the rover another sol before we’re in the reachability of the arm and then the first thing we’ll do is use the Rock Abrasion Tool, the so-called RAT, to grind into the rock so that we can get beneath the top layer of the rock to see what’s inside.

On the other side of the planet, on MER-B it is sol 147, in the beginning of sol 147 at this time and they’ve concluded about two days of Rock Abrasion Tool RAT activity on a rock known as Virginia at the site of Endurance crater. So they’re gonna be using the arm instruments to do some further Microscopic Imaging and Alpha Proton X-ray Spectrometer work on these rocks inside of Endurance crater.

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