[X] My Assistant

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

(1) "It's very unlikely that dust devils scrubbed [MER-A's] solar
arrays; instead, [the rover cameras] indicate an unstable atmosphere that
would produce cleansing winds. Spirit was located near a ridge when this
happened, where greater winds would be expected".

(2) The end of the latest MER mission extension was deliberately set for a month
after the Martian winter solstice in Sept. 2006, to see whether the craft are
still viable in increasing sunlight for still another extension.

(3) MER-A's recognition that "Methuselah" and Larry's Lookout are part of the
same layered bedrock unit makes them "the first mappable geological unit in
the Columbia foothiils," says Squyres. "The beds dip to the left and they
line up with beds across the valley -- they all tilt down to the left."
They do indeed have a hard top layer below a softer lower layer, as
indicated by that spectacular overhang at Larry's Lookout; but their
connection to water is as yet uncertain. The rover will spend fully 2 weeks
studying Methuselah, and then return to climbing Husband Hill and maybe then
descending its south face.

(4) The salt patch accidentally uncovered by MER-A's wheels -- mostly sulfates
with some phosphates -- is so richly hydrated that the Mini-TES detected the
bound-water line for the first time on either mission.

[alan]

Something from Steve Squyres' latest update
http://athena1.cornell.edu/news/mubss/

"In order to add to our emerging understanding of this stratigraphy, we've planned out our moves with Spirit for what'll probably be the next couple of weeks. We're just now finishing up some arm work on "Pittsburgh", another target on Methuselah. After that, we're going to leave Methuselah and head back to an outcrop named Jibsheet that we passed by on our way up the hill. And after we've learned what we can there, the plan is to head back toward Larry's Lookout once more, this time circling around toward the eastern side of the Lookout. There are some rocks there, down low on the outcrop, that we have become very interested in..."

Spirit may hang around for more than two weeks.