[X] My Assistant

[OWW]

Hi, I’m Jake Matijevic and I’ll be giving the Flight Director’s Briefing for today, June 3rd 2005.

Today is sol 504 for Spirit and yesterday Spirit drove about 20 meters away from an outcrop up in the Columbia Hills. It completed a series of in-situ investigations at that site and is now moving down the hill on it’s way back up to Husband Hill in the Columbia Hills area. Once there, Spirit will take a rather interesting panorama of the entire Gusev crater basin.
Spirit has been experiencing the effects of dust in the atmosphere. This has continued throughout the southern hemisphere as Mars moves into what’s commonly referred to as the dust storm season.

This is also seen at the Meridiani site where Opportunity has been, now on sol 483 late in the evening, has completed another small drive, driving out of a dune formation, that Opportunity drove into on sol 446. Opportunity has been carefully moving out of this dune and should be completely out of it within the next couple of sols. Once that’s completed, it will continue its trek across the Meridiani plains to the Erebus crater and beyond.

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