[X] My Assistant

[OWW]

Hello, this is George Chen with the Mars Exploration Rover Flight Director report for Friday July 16th 2004.

Today, we’re on sol 190, finished 190, on MER-A Spirit. It is now predawn on sol 191. On sol 190 we continued to test our new driving methods given our front right wheel that had been having some problems recently, so we tried for the first time using a script that would modify the software onboard that would allow us to drive more efficiently. So we’re gonna continue driving backwards because that way we would drag the wheel that we’re having problems with behind us. And then we’re only using it about ten percent of the time and it seems to be working quite well. Today, the upcoming day, sol 191 we’ll continue to test this new method of driving and in addition of that we will be testing the calibrations on the IDD arm. We’re gonna be putting the Mossbauer spectrometer down on two spots in the soil and then on a rock and take some measurements on that rock.

Over to the other side of the planet, MER-B Opportunity is in the middle of 170 and we’re taking PanCams of a structure known as ‘Razorback’. Is is an interesting structure that shows a trench and then vertical plates of some kind on the edge of the trench. That seems to be an unusual structure that we want to take a closer look at. So this upcoming sol, 171, we’re gonna inch down further into the crater, another meter or so. And our goal eventually is to drive over to this ‘Razorback’ structure and take some science measurements of what they’re composed of.

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