2005 11 21, November 21st, 2005 Options

[OWW]

Good morning, I’m Byron Jones and this is the Flight Director’s Report for Monday, November 21st.

On Opportunity today is sol 650 and on the other side of Mars it’s sol 670 for Spirit. This marks a very special day in our surface operations, where we’ve been on the surface with Spirit for 686 Earth days or one Martian year. And we even have a birthday card from some of our viewers. Thanks for your support.

We’re going to do something a little different today and we’re going to take some questions from our viewers.

Paolo, from Czech Republic, Europe, asks how the temperature is on the surface of Husband Hill during this Martian season.

Well it’s Fall right now for Spirit and she sees temperatures between minus 60 or minus 65 degrees Celsius, or minus 76 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s around 5 AM local solar time.

He also asked: Is the Spirit rover visible from orbit by the Mars Orbiter Camera on NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor?

Well yes, actually both rovers are visible as tiny specks on the images that come down from that orbiter and at one time we were able to see our tracks actually from [the rover] traveling between Eagle Crater and Endurance Crater.

Pasquale from Milan, Italy asks: What do the rovers do during overnight observations?

Well, we image stars. We also image meteor showers that may have been caused from Halley’s comet. We make attempts to image the Mars Odyssey Orbiter and we also image the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos.

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