Post-Solstice at Home Plate North Options

[CosmicRocker]

... Imagine if the rover team built our cars!

I absolutely agree with you, but how much would our cars cost?

[Astro0]

You'll be happy to know that the next scheduled (DTE) tracking pass with Spirit will be through the Madrid DSN complex at:
0930-1130 UTC Wednesday 17th December 2008

I think that'll be an appropriate point to start a new thread as Spirit begins the next phase of its journey to vonBraun and Goddard

[alan]

It's now sol 1757, two Mars years since Spirit's solar panels were cleaned by a dust devil strong winds on sol 420

[centsworth_II]

It's now sol 1757, two Mars years since Spirit's solar panels were cleaned by a dust devil strong winds on sol 420

What about the cleaning event described below that occurred just two weeks before the great dust storm of 2008? If that cleaning had not taken place, I don't think Spirit would have made it through the storm.
(Note Steve Squyres' comment: "...our speculation is that we took a direct hit from a dust devil.")

Planetary News: Mars (2007)
Luck blew in on the Martian wind for Spirit on Sol 1224 (June 13, 2007)....it finally got a much-needed spring-cleaning that increased power from its solar arrays by 120 watt-hours, pushing the rover's energy into a really comfortable zone above 600 watt-hours, and bestowing it with a real "second wind." It had been a long time coming. The last time this rover experienced dust-lifting winds was in 2005.

"This [dust-cleaning event] was interesting, different from cleaning events we've had in the past," Squyres said in an interview in his office at Cornell, two days after it happened. "In the past, we've had cleaning events that took place when we were on a summit or a ridgecrest and in the past they have sometimes occurred at night. The rover will shut down in the afternoon with dirty solar panels and wake up in the morning with clean solar panels and we have no idea exactly when it happened. In this particular instance, the rover was awake and busy and active when the event happened so we can pinpoint the timing of it. It happened at 1:20 pm in the afternoon local solar time. Of course, we are now down on a low spot, not up on a ridgecrest of anything. So our speculation –- this is pure speculation at this point – but our speculation is that we took a direct hit from a dust devil. We don't know that. But we are in place where dust devils happen and it's prime time for dust devil activity, the time of day when dust devils seem to be most active."

"It is plausible," agrees Arvidson. "But really not testable. Since the Mini-TES was opened when it happened, Ruff and his team are still evaluating whether the dust on the mirrors have changed, but we're still getting reasonable spectra." The only way they could tell if we were hit with a dust devil, short of somehow capturing signs of the devil with one of the cameras, he noted, is to look at HiRISE data after the cleaning event, note where the vehicle was, and see whether or not there is a new dust devil track. "Otherwise it would be very difficult to understand whether it was wind gust or actual turbulence due to a dust devil passing by."

[briv1016]

Any news on how the post conjunction downlinks have gone?