[X] My Assistant

[OWW]

Good morning. My name is Joel Signorelli and this is what’s happening on Mars. It’s Monday the 27th of March and it’s around noon for Spirit on it’s sol 793.

And the last 30 days Spirit has been working around this place called ‘Home Plate’. We’ve completed some successful scientific observations there and our immediate goal right now is to go to a place called ‘McCool Hill’.
It’s getting to be autumn in the southern hemisphere and the sun is getting lower on the horizon and for solar powered vehicles like Spirit and Opportunity, that means there is less solar energy coming into the array.
So, in order for us to survive the winter we have to get to a place where our arrays face the north, so for us this means that we have to drive 120 meters to ‘McCool Hill’ and that is going to become our winter haven.
In the last few weeks, we’ve had the front drive actuator on Spirit fail, so we can’t rotate the wheel anymore. We can only turn it so we are forced to drive backwards and we’re learning how to drive differently on Mars than we have in the past before.

On the other side of Mars, it’s sol 772 around midnight for Opportunity. And Opportunity has just completed around 100 days worth of observations at a place called ‘Erebus Crater’ and it’s next immediate goal is to drive around two kilometres to a place called ‘Victoria Crater’ which is going to be it’s winter haven. In the past week, Opportunity drove around 180 meters.

Our communications link with both vehicles was interrupted last week because of a safing on the orbiter called Odyssey. And since last week, Odyssey has recovered itself and we are back in normal communications with both vehicles.

So that’s it for today. I’m Joel Signorelli and that’s what’s happening on Mars.